Proximal Deictic Temporal Reference with Calendar Units

Résumé En

The paper centres on deictic reference to temporal segments of the near future or past using of the fundamental calendar units (days, years, weeks, months) and their divisions (days of the week, parts of the day). • The global aim of the study: to identify language specific and cross linguistic patterns in the linguistic use of calendar units. • A more specific goal: determining to what extent temporal reference can be achieved through linguistic calendar expressions independently of other elements—how much of the necessary information is directly encoded in them and how much is supplied by additional linguistic and extra-linguistic elements. We presents initial results of ongoing research. We will consider here some of the properties of three types of expressions employing linguistic calendar terms: the fundamental units (day, year, week, month), parts of the day and the (named) days of the week. The fundamental units have been examined (to varying degrees of depth) in some 20 languages of various language families. The other units have only been examined in a more limited set of languages, at this stage. As will be shown, the three types of expressions reflect temporal reference to different levels or different cycles and their linguistic behaviour reveals differences in the temporal information they encode and in their ability to function independently as temporal markers.