Verbs as Spatial Deixis Markers in Jingulu

In Jingulu discourse and narrative, nominals sometimes bear suffixes which are identical to light verbs. As discussed in section 1, light verbs are bound morphemes which form the syntactic core of verbal predicate words, and typically encode tense, aspect, mood, and associated motion. The appearance of these morphemes on nominals is discussed in section 2, where it is shown that, in the nominal context, these morphemes do not reflect any verbal/inflectional properties of the clause, but rather serve as markers of definiteness or deixis. In this function, the morphemes are best translated by phrases such as 'here, up ahead, back there' and so forth. Possible origins of this phenomenon are entertained in section 3, with the hypothesis advanced that it may have arisen from the reduction of subordinate clauses. A question remains as to whether these 'tense-marked nominals' should be analysed synchronically as clauses or noun phrases. Section 4 searches for similar phenomena in other languages, examining tense marking occurring on nominals independently of clausal tense. While such phenomena are found in other languages, these typically mark temporal rather than spatial deixis