2005/08/24 by Maria Bittner · 3 citations
Arts and Humanities · Computer Science · Psychology · #Alias #Art #Computer science #Harry potter #History #Language, Metaphor, and Cognition #Linguistics #Literature #Natural Language Processing Techniques #Philosophy #Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
paper · doi:10.1093/jos/ffh029
openalex publication_date 2005/08/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
The Eskimo language Kalaallisut ( alias West Greenlandic) has traditionally been described as having a rich tense system, with three future tenses (Kleinschmidt 1851; Bergsland 1955; Fortescue 1984) and possibly four past tenses (Fortescue 1984). Recently, however, Shaer (2003) has challenged these traditional claims, arguing that Kalaallisut is, in fact, tenseless. This paper settles the debate, in favour of Shaer, based on text studies examining how the English future auxiliaries will/would and is/was going to are rendered in Kalaallisut translations of five books: Harry Potter , The Old Man and the Sea , Pippi Longstocking (translated from the Swedish), The Blind Colt , and Black Star, Bright Dawn . The results of these five text studies are reported here in detail and in theory-neutral terms. They conclusively show that Kalaallisut is truly tenseless, but has an alternative system that conveys temporal information, even about the future, as precisely as the English tenses.