Tense, aspect, and modality in Gangam narrative and hortatory discourse

This study investigates tense, aspect, and modality (TAM) in Gangam, a Gur language spoken in Northern Togo. Basic morphosyntax relevant to the encoding of TAM is investigated as well as basic meanings of TAM inflections and particles. TAM is then analyzed in narrative and hortatory discourse. TAM is seen to function at both the level of the salience hierarchies and at the level of the text schemas. This study utilizes and synthesizes the theoretical models of Robert E. Longacre and Ilah Fleming.Special attention is given to the issue of salience (the degree to which the basic parametric values of a particular text genre are reflected by a verb form or verbal construction) versus importance (crucialness to the development of the text), and the semantic structure line of importance is proposed. In Gangam, the line of importance is explicitly signaled by use of the focal coordinating conjunction...