engleski

The Croatian future tense in the Croatian tense system: a cognitive grammar analysis

In this paper we have set out to prove that the future tense in Croatian expresses a partially subjectified prospective epistemic immediacy. This is due to the characteristics of each of the parts of the composite structure (the development of the auxiliary htjeti ‘will’ from a volitional meaning, the meaning of directedness of the infinitive), and to the partial (formal and conceptual) grammaticalization of the entire composite structure. These characteristics explain its limited use in modal contexts. They are in line with cross-linguistic developments of the future tense, as well as what is known about the future tense across the Slavic (especially South Slavic) region. The view of the Croatian future tense presented here is in line with a mixed tense-aspect view of the Croatian tense system. It hinges on the notions of epistemic immediacy and distance, as well as on the notion of viewpoint. The Croatian present tense establishes an action as epistemically immediate from the point of view of an actual or a surrogate ground (Geld and Zovko Dinković 2007). It is subjectified, in the sense of pulling the action towards the speaker, it refers to the epistemically immediate sphere, but it does not signal a particular orientation of the conceptualizer. The Croatian aorist is similarly subjectified and also refers to an immediate virtual plane, but it also establishes an order of the actions: the action of the aorist is necessarily viewed from its terminal point (for a cognitive analysis and examples cf. Stanojević and Geld 2011a). Thus, whereas the present tense is imperfective in its nature (Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca 1994, 126) because it suggests seeing action from within (Comrie 1976, 24), the aorist is perfective because it is viewed from a point located at the terminal point of the event. The various tenses formed using the l-participle (the past tense, conditionals, future II, etc.) hinge on the l-participle being a viewpoint operator “locating the viewpoint after the terminal point of the event and external to it” (Stanojević 2011, 236). The l-participle is an operator signaling retrospectivity as well as epistemic distance, and can be seen from an actual or a surrogate ground (for examples and analysis cf. Stanojević 2011). This means that the conceptualizer looks back upon an epistemically distant action. Within such a system, the future tense signals an epistemically immediate action, where the conceptualizer is oriented prospectively looking from the ground located in the actual plane. This cursory presentation of the Croatian tense system suggests that it can be described taking into consideration epistemic immediacy and distance, as well as the notions of (im)perfectivity, retrospectivity and prospectivity. These notions are clearly aspectual in nature , which coincides with diachronic evidence about the development of the Slavic tense system (Hewson and Bubenik 1997). How exactly this process works for the entire Croatian tense system, how it is related to traditional Slavic-style aspect and how it fits in with other cross-(South) Slavic evidence remains to be investigated.

Croatian, Future Tense, Cognitive Grammar, subjectification, Slavic TAM system

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