Distributed tense and pragmatics of the present in Wauja (Xingu Arawak)

Abstract

This paper advances a critical discussion on time reference in ‘tenseless’ languages, here described as ‘distributed tense languages,’ and suggests that speakers of these languages may expand upon and elaborate the multiple qualities of time in pragmatic and sophisticated ways. Drawing on Upper-Xinguan Wauja linguistic, ethnographic, and ethnoarchaeological data collected in local villages and during mapping expeditions, the authors argue that much like the archaeological landscape, the present is understood and represented by the Wauja people as a temporally dense intersection of multiple times and durations. Speech events of place-naming and discourses produced in interactions with ethnohistorical sites are analyzed as constituting Wauja modes of temporalization and orientations to time. The goal is to demonstrate how these people’s interactional engagement with their landscapes continually reproduces a densely mediated temporal field of discursive ‘chronotopes,’ spatiotemporal envelopes that combine to make up dynamic and deep presents. From this viewpoint, language and materiality contribute to perceptions of change and continuity that together form a present that is densely multitemporal.

Keywords
Tense; Time indexicality; Chronotope; Multi-temporality