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Creators/Authors contains: "Maša Bešlin"

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  1. Mayan languages have been claimed to lack the category Tense. Temporal interpretation is instead said to be guided by grammatical Aspect (see e.g. Larsen 1988 for K’iche’, Vázquez Álvarez 2002 for Chol, Bohnemeyer 2002 for Yucatec Maya, Coon 2016 for an overview, a.o.). In this paper, I examine the distribution and interpretation of the Tense/Aspect markers x- and k- in K’iche’, traditionally said to mark perfective (completive) and imperfective (incompletive) Aspect, respectively. I consider the co-occurrence possibilities of these markers with temporal adverbials (including temporal clauses), aspectual adverbials (‘in/for an hour’), the adverb na ‘still’, and individual level predicates. The evidence converges on the conclusion that the K’iche’ prefixes x- and k- mark (past and non-past) Tense rather than Aspect. The analysis is also shown to make the correct predictions for temporal matching in embedded clauses. Finally, I consider some uses of k- in past contexts and conclude that they are best seen as instances of the narrative present. 
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