Ebook: Time in Navajo: Direct and Indirect Interpretation

In Press, IJAL, 2007. — 69 p.This article proposes an explanation of the way information about time is conveyed in Navajo. 1 We assume that all sentences have a temporal interpretation, direct or indirect. We have two main purposes in this article. The first is to discuss temporal interpretation in this Athabaskan language. The Navajo temporal system, which is varied, has not yet been described in detail. Further, the language allows sentences without explicit temporal information. In such sentences temporal interpretation is indirect - arrived at by inference. We outline the principles underlying the default inferences. Our second purpose is to show that a few general principles of temporal interpretation, which hold for some other languages, apply very nicely to Navajo. The principles include semantic rules for interpreting explicit expressions about time, and pragmatic principles for inferring temporal location indirectly. The applicability of these principles to Navajo is a satisfying though unsurprising result; but it is worth working out explicitly.