Realisirrealis Aptative Durative Time, aspect, and mood

85 a. Ø -ailo b. ye Ø -ailolo men 2s-call you 2s-call. CNT what Call out. What are you yelling about? c. k-alpopo omkele 1s-pierce.3m. CNT armband I weave an armband. For a technical treatment of the reduplication process, see Staley 1994c, 1994d . Some of the verbs reduplicate in other ways, as shown in 86 and 87. Example 87 is highly unusual in that the prefix is included in the reduplicated form. 86 a. l-itipi Wol tisi b. w-ititipi wof 3m-go.down Wol path 1d-go.down. CNT river He went down the Wol path. We two were going down the river. 87 a. p-ratei b. p-ra-pratei 3p-liveremain 3p-liveremain. CNT They live. They are living.

2.3.5.3 Realisirrealis

A key distinction in Olo is the difference between REALIS and IRREALIS . A. McGregor 1983 called irrealis “future tense” and realis “narrative tense.” The use of realis for the flow of narratives is clear. This is not surprising as realis mood reflects the certainty that a given event has happened. Realis in Olo is the unmarked form; there is no morphological marker or lexical item that shows it. It is shown only by the absence of any other marker. Irrealis is indicated by the word ma. This word occurs preverbally. It normally occurs between the subject and the verb. It can also occur before the subject, 88b. 88 a. pe ma p-e b. ma pe p-e they IR 3p-go IR they 3p-go They will go. They will go. The distinction between the two forms in 88 is very small, and seems to indicate the level of uncer- tainty. The irrealis marker in the initial position is the most uncertain. While ma shows a high correlation with future events, it is incorrect to think of it as a future tense. There are future events which do not get marked with ma as shown by the last translation of 84, and there are past events which do get ma, as in 89. 89 woso Otei weisi-ne pultoser kolo, nempis l-iye ma tisi SBD Otei turn-3f bulldozer NEG today-2+ 3m-dst IR road l-ato malfem ku lepei. 3m-remain near us here.close If Otei had not turned the bulldozer convinced the driver to work in a different place, then a long time ago the road would have been here very close to us. 30 The Olo Language

2.3.5.4 Aptative

Olo uses a morpheme, miso, to indicate the ability of the Agent to accomplish an event. This is what I call APTATIVE . It occurs in the same positions as ma. The use of the aptative implies not only ability but also willingness to perform the action. 90 a. ki miso k-elele nimpe le-iye I can 1s-fell.3m tree 3m-2s I can cut down your tree. b. le miso l-eila nimpe kolo, olo le wala kumpu. he can 3m-lift log NEG no he DUR small He cannot lift the log, he is still small.

2.3.5.5 Durative

Olo has a morpheme that shows duration of an event. This word, wala, shows a very similar distribu- tion to ma irrealis and miso aptative. It is used in slightly different circumstances than the continu- ous. It is used in command forms 91, and in places where the duration is contraexpectational 92, or involving adjectival predications 93. 91 wala Ø -ile DUR 2s-stand Keep standing.Don’t move. 92 le l-ale wefe lom? olo wala l-unwei wom. he 3m-pick coconuts QUES no DUR 3m-go.up coconut Has he picked the coconuts? No, he is still going up the coconut tree. 93 ningio pe-iki ma n-e kolo, ne wala kumpu-ne, ine so n-e. daughter f-1s IR 3f-go NEG she DUR small-3f big.f ISQ 3f-go My daughter can not go, she is still too small, when she is big she can go. The distinctions between durative and continuous are two-fold. First, the durative cannot encode re- peated action for punctiliar events. Second, the durative implies a nonvolitional state, while the con- tinuous implies volitional action. The continuous can also shift a state to an action 94a, b. 94 a. le wala l-ile b. le l-ilele he DUR 3m-stand he 3m-stand. CNT He still stands. He is walking. This particular morpheme is not as bleached semantically as the irrealis or aptative, but it is more bleached than most other lexical items. There is a sense about it that can be translated into English as “still” or “wait”. There is another device which marks durationiteration of events, the verb e ‘go’. This verb can be used to show that an event or sequence of events lasted for a long time. It is used in its normal sense of motion through space away from the deictic center. Multiple uses of the verb indicate that the motion lasted for an extended amount of time. 95 a. ku m-e Abrau we 1p-go Abrau We went to Abrau. 2.3 Grammatical Characterization 31 b. ku m-e m-e m-e m-e fale uf we 1p-go 1p-go 1p-go 1p-go arrive village We went and went and went and went, then we arrive at the village. This type of construction can also be used to mark durationiteration when there is no motion di- rectly involved. In 96 the iterative sequence is set up by repetition of the individual verbs and the verb e ‘go’ marks the repetition of the cycle over time. 96 ki k-e k-esi lou. I 1s-go 1s-work sago k-esi yapopi k-esi yapopi k-e k-e k-e, fei, mulpou. 1s-work squeeze 1s-work squeeze 1s-go 1s-go 1s-go now night I went and worked sago. I chipped and squeezed, chipped and squeezed, I went and went and went, now it was night. This type of duration is not yet a grammaticalization of the verb into an aspect marker but is a meta- phorical use of the motion verb. In this case it indicates not distance through space, but rather distance through time. Each iteration involves two separate events, chipping and squeezing. The use of the mo- tion verb indicates that the iterations occur over an extended amount of time.

2.3.5.6 Event closure