Author(s) :

Mulusew Asratie.

Volume/Issue :

Abstract :

This paper tries to provide how tense is mapped in Amharic. Amharic expresses tense periphrastically by using verbs to indicate past and non-past. However, it is not uncommon to find the past tense marker in non-past and the non-past tense markers in past contexts. In all their occurrences, the tense markers show various semantic contrasts to each other in addition to tense. Based on these semantic contrasts, I argue that the mapping of past and non-past tense in Amharic is fashioned in such a way that the past tense marker indicates exclusion and the non-past tense markers indicate inclusion, similar to Iatridou’s (2000) proposal for English and Greek. I also show that the mapping of tense in such a way explains the unique interaction of the tense markers with negation and complementizers (conditionals) in the language.

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