Fala fictícia fossilizada: o tempo futuro em Aikanã

Abstract

Aikanã, an indigenous isolate language, is spoken in the south of the state of Rondônia, Brazil, and it has a way of expressing future tense that is, at first sight, somewhat surprising. In addition to a future morpheme (-re-, or remote future -ta-), the construction involves an obligatory first person morpheme (either singular or plural), independent of whether the verb is already inflected for person (first person or not). Consequently, future tense in Aikanã always involves two person markers on the verb, which correspond grammatically in number with the verb's subject, but not necessarily in person. Although these person markers do not correspond with one another on the grammatical level, it will be shown that they do correspond on the discourse level. For researchers attempting to analyse the language, this construction has always been enigmatic. Recently, however, as more knowledge about similar constructions in the neighbouring languages has become available (even though they are genetically unrelated languages), it has become clear how the Aikanã future construction has a concrete cognitive basis in the grammar and semantics of the language, involving fictive quotation.