Temporal reference in Indonesian bare declarative sentences

Abstract

This paper presents an account on how bare declarative sentences in Indonesian receive their temporal references. I follow Lin’s (2003) proposal of covert tense selectional restriction in Mandarin that governs the selection of an appropriate aspectual viewpoint or aktionsart as the complement of the tense node. Covert present tense can only select imperfective aspectual viewpoint which is denoted by the atelic predicates, and covert past tense can only select perfective aspectual viewpoint which is denoted by telic predicates. Thus, it is suggested that the temporal references of bare declarative sentences in Indonesian can be indirectly indicated by the telicity properties of the predication. That is, if the predicate is telic, bare declarative sentences in Indonesian are inferred to take place in the past. On the other hand, atelic predicate covertly indicates a present eventuality. A discussion on pedagogical contribution of the findings and suggestions for further study are given at the end of this paper.