Consideraciones areales de la transversalidad de tiempo gramatical en lenguas de Colombia, Venezuela y Ecuador del periodo colonial

This study of areal typology presents the spatial distribution of transversality (the expression of a category as a free form and as a bound element, in the form of a clitic, segmental affix, or suprafix, to nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, adpositions, and other word classes) of grammatical tense. For this purpose, it combines the proposal by Hancil, Do-Hurinville, and Dao (2018) on transversality of grammatical categories with Muysken’s (2008) areal considerations, which are applied to descriptions made by missionaries of twenty languages of Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador during the colonial period (16th-18th centuries), projecting maps (Nerbonne et al., 2011) that present formal reports of grammatical tense across seven properties (as an independent constituent or associated with different sets of lexical items). The highest level of transversality in this category is found in Muisca/Muyscubbun (Chibchan family), which offers a regional separation between central Colombia and the rest of the territory analyzed. Every linguistic system has some form of expressing grammatical tense, although there are no documented cases of this category associated with adjectives, adpositions, or nouns.