Future Discourse in a Tenseless Language

The Eskimo language Kalaallisut (alias West Greenlandic) has traditionally been described as having a rich tense system, with three future tenses (Kleinschmidt 1851, Bergsland 1955, Fortescue 1984) and possibly four past tenses (Fortescue 1984). Recently however, Shaer (2003) has challenged these traditional claims, arguing that Kalaallisut is in fact tenseless. This paper settles the debate, in favor of Shaer, based on text studies examining how the English future auxiliaries will/would and is/was going to are rendered in Kalaallisut translations of five books: Harry Potter, The Old Man and the Sea, Pippi Longstocking (translated from the Swedish), The Blind Colt, and Black Star, Bright Dawn. The results of these five text studies are reported here in detail and in theory-neutral terms. They conclusively show that Kalaallisut is truly tenseless, but has an alternative system that conveys temporal information, even about the future, as precisely as the English tenses. Is it possible for a language to have no tense marking at all? And if so, how would one talk about the past, present and future? Typological surveys of tense systems generally report some languages as tenseless—for instance, Lakhota and Chamorro (Chung and Timberlake 1985), or Burmese and Dyirbal (Comrie 1985). But surveys do not offer any detailed evidence and until recently, neither did model-theoretic semantic literature. By now, however, we have a substantial body of evidence that the following languages may be tenseless: Yukatek Maya (Bohnemeyer 2002), West Greenlandic (Shaer 2003), and possibly Mohawk (Baker and Travis 1997). In addition, the syntactic work of Ritter and Wiltschko (2004) suggests that Blackfoot (Algonquian) and Halkomelem (Salish) may be tenseless as well. At this point, a skeptic may still consider this evidence inconclusive. In this report I aim to provide conclusive evidence for West Greenlandic, which reference grammars describe as tensed, unlike Shaer (2003). I prefer to call this language by its official name, Kalaallisut, to highlight its political status as the language of a country, Kalaallit Nunaat, which includes all of Greenland, not just the west coast. The true name Kalaallisut also highlights the linguistic relation to Inuktitut and other Eskimo languages. My goal here is to report the relevant facts of Kalaallisut in theoryneutral terms and in enough detail to demonstrate two claims. One, that Kalaallisut is truly tenseless. And two, that nonetheless, it conveys temporal information as precisely as the English tenses, but by means of a very different system. This demonstration will include a detailed description of the Kalaallisut alternative to a tense system. I devote special attention to discourses about the future, because it is particularly difficult to imagine how one could talk about the future without any tense.