Optional Past Tenses in Kanien'kéha

Terrance Gatchalian (McGill)

The emerging picture from recent work on languages with optional past tense morphemes (Bochnack, 2016; Cable 2017; Chen et al., 2021) suggests that optional tense morphemes are semantically on-par with obligatory past tense morphemes in, e.g., English. While Plugian and van der Auwera (2006) claims that such optional past tenses are semantically richer than “standard” past tenses, including an additional discontinuity component asserting the cessation of the eventuality, detailed investigation on Tlingit (Cable, 2017) and Wá-šiw (Bochnak, 2016)has revealed that this additional meaning is a non-semantic inference. The present work investigates the temporal system of Kanien’kéha (Northern Iroquoian) in light of this debate. I show (i) that Kanien’kéha has two optional suffixes expressing pastness, and (ii) that the two suffixes pattern differently with respect to cessation inferences. I establish novel empirical generalizations regarding the properties of the two optional past suffixes in Kanien’kéha, and forward an analysis of these suffixes which has implications for the theoretical status of Discontinuous Pasts.