ePrints

A comparative approach to evidential tense in Quechua and Aymara

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Gabriel Martinez VeraORCiD

Downloads

• Published version [.pdf]

Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Abstract

This paper discusses tense markers that convey an indirectness implication by comparatively analyzing sentences with the past tense suffixes -sqa in Cuzco Quechua and -tayna in Southern Aymara. The main contribution is to provide support for a (non-modal) evidence acquisition time analysis of these markers, which, I claim, is to be preferred over an analysis that relies on spatio-temporal distance and speaker perception. I provide novel data that highlight that acquiring evidence for a proposition is the key factor in the cases under examination (instead of relying on perceptual distance). I further show that ‘late realization’ scenarios are not possible in these languages, and discuss how the evidence acquisition time analysis captures this. The discussion provides the first systematic comparison between Cuzco Quechua and Southern Aymara from the perspective of formal semantics, which supports the well-known descriptive statement in the Andean literature that the grammars of these languages are parallel.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Martínez Vera G

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Journal of Semantics

Year: 2026

Volume: 43

Issue: 1

Pages: 55-83

Print publication date: 01/02/2026

Online publication date: 28/01/2026

Acceptance date: 17/12/2025

Date deposited: 07/02/2026

ISSN (print): 0167-5133

ISSN (electronic): 1477-4593

Publisher: Oxford University Press

URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffaf015

DOI: 10.1093/jos/ffaf015

Altmetrics

Share