Tense, Aspect, Modality and Evidentiality

The verb phrase is a central locus of grammaticalisation in the world’s languages where information, crucial to the interpretation of the utterance, is encoded. Many scholars (Givón, 1982 inter alia) use the acronym TAM to refer to the semantic domains typically grammaticalised in the verb phrase (Tense, Aspect and Modality), but the discovery of evidentiality as a fourth notion questions the universality of this taxonomy. A close observation of the cross-linguistic data can lead to another deconstruction of TAM(E), as it is often difficult to propose a consistent description of each category of this acronym, as well as clear criteria for their borders. The fusional encoding of semantic features belonging in tense, aspect, modality and evidentiality, and the evolution of verb affixes or constructions from one semantic domain to another illustrates further the porosity of these categories. (Nuyts 2014 inter alia