Starting points for tense-aspect analysis: Deictic adverbs

We examine tense-related adverbs across a range of West African languages. Our
interest stems from the proposal by Nurse et al. (2016) that Proto-Niger-Congo
lacked grammatical tense. At the outset we focus on equivalents for day/night
cycle adverbs. We attend initially to Edoid, then its neighbors within West Benue
Congo and East Benue Congo followed by more distantly related Kwa, Gur, Kru,
and finally non-Niger-Congo major languages of the Wider Lake Chad Region. Two
lexicalization patterns for day/night dominate, one analytic (‘yesterday,’ ‘today,’
‘tomorrow’), the other synthetic (‘today’ vs. ‘yesterday/tomorrow’). To pursue this
general pattern further in one Edoid language, we assessed gram expression for
tense and its relation to temporal adverb types. Grams expressed tense proper and
temporal distance. Relative to adverbs, we found that values for tense proper and
temporal distance did not distribute evenly. Most temporal adverbs (80%) aligned
with the tense values past and future. And most preferred distal over proximal as
co-constituent.