Nominal TAM is the indication of

tense–aspect–mood Tense–aspect–mood (commonly abbreviated ) or tense–modality–aspect (abbreviated as ) is a group of grammatical categories that are important to understanding spoken or written content, and which are marked in different ways by different la ...

by inflecting a noun, rather than a verb. In ''clausal nominal TAM'', the noun indicates TAM information about the

clause In language, a clause is a constituent that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject and a syntactic predicate, the latter typically a verb phrase composed of a verb wit ...

(as opposed to the noun phrase). Whether or not a particular language can best be understood as having clausal nominal TAM can be controversial, and there are various borderline cases. A language that can indicate tense by attaching a verbal

clitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a ...

to a noun (such as the -ll'' clitic in English) is not generally regarded as using nominal TAM.

Examples

Clausal nominal TAM

Various languages have been shown to have clausal nominal TAM. In the Niger-Congo language Supyire, the form of the first person and second pronouns reflects whether the clause has declarative or non-declarative mood. In the Gǀwi language of Botswana, subject pronouns reflect the imperative or non-imperative mood of the clause (while the verb itself does not). In the

Chamicuro language Chamicuro is a dormant (documented but not used by any native speakers) South American language formerly spoken in Peru. The language was used by the Chamicuro people who were around one hundred people. The Chamicuros live on a tributary of the ...

of Peru, the definite article accompanying the subject or object of a clause indicates either past or non-past tense. In the

Pitta Pitta language Pitta Pitta (also known under several other spellings) is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language. It was spoken around Boulia, Queensland. Pituri The name ''pituri'' for the leaves chewed as a stimulant by traditional Aboriginal people has ...

of Australia, the mandatory case marking system differs depending on the tense of the clause. Other languages exhibiting clausal nominal TAM include Lardil (Australia), Gurnu (Australia), Yag Dii (Cameroon), Sahidic Coptic (Egypt), Gusiilay (Niger-Congo), Iai (Oceania), Tigak (Oceania), and Guaymi (Panama and Costa Rica).

Non-clausal nominal TAM

In the Guarani language of Paraguay, nouns can optionally take several different past and future markers to express ideas such as "our old house (the one we no longer live in)", "the abandoned car", "what was once a bridge", "bride-to-be" or even "my ex-future-wife," or rather, "the woman who at one point was going to be my wife."

Related grammatical phenomena

Verbal clitics

Although verbal clitics such as -ll'' in English are attached to nouns and indicate TAM information, they are not really examples of nominal TAM because they are

s rather than

inflection In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and ...

s and therefore not part of the noun at all.

Rodney Huddleston Rodney D. Huddleston (born 4 April 1937) is a British linguist and grammarian specializing in the study and description of English. Huddleston is the primary author of ''The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'' (), which presents a comp ...

and Geoffrey Pullum, ''

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language ''The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'' (''CGEL'') is a descriptive grammar of the English language. Its primary authors are Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum. Huddleston was the only author to work on every chapter. It was pub ...

''. This is easily seen in sentences where the clitic is attached to another part of speech, such as "''The one you want'll be in the shed''". Another way to tell the difference is to consider the following hypothetical dialogue: * "''I thought you said that she read the book.''" * "''No, I said she will read the book.''" ''as opposed to"''No, I said she'll read the book.''" ''wrong in this contextThe speaker cannot emphasise the future time by placing voice stress on ''she'll'', and so instead uses the expanded phrase ''she will''. This is characteristic of clitics as opposed to inflections (i.e. clitics cannot be emphasised by placing voice stress on the word to which they are attached). The significance of this can be seen by comparison with a second hypothetical dialogue, using the English negative suffix -''n't'' (which is best understood as an inflection rather than a clitic): * "''I thought you said that it is a good book.''" * "''No, I said it is not a good book.''" ''or"''No, I said it isn't a good book.''" ''equally correctIn this case the speaker could choose to say isn't rather than is not. Even though the stress then falls on the syllable ''IS'', the meaning of the sentence is understood as emphasising the ''NOT''. This indicates that ''isn't'' is one inflected word rather than a word with a clitic attached.

References

{{reflist Grammar