Nominal Tense? The Meaning of GuaranÍ Nominal Temporal Markers

Paraguayan Guaraní has nominal markers that affect the temporal interpretation of the noun phrase they attach to. On the basis of data collected during recent fieldwork in Paraguay, I explore in this article the lexical semantic, semantic, and discourse properties of these nominal temporal markers and develop a semantic analysis that accounts for their meaning and use. I then address the claim (made e.g. in Nordlinger & Sadler 2004) that such markers are nominal past and future tenses. A comparison of the properties of verbal temporal markers to those of the Guaraní nominal markers reveals that the Guaraní nominal markers share few of the properties of verbal tenses and hence should not be called nominal tenses. I conclude by addressing the implications of these findings for theories of temporality.