The Expression of Past Events in South Slavic: A View from Torlak

This paper investigates how past events are expressed in Torlak, a non-standardized variety spoken in southern Serbia, as opposed to the standard BCMS (Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian). Past events in Torlak are conveyed mainly through the use of the analytic perfect and the synthetic aorist and imperfect, just as in BCMS. However, unlike in BCMS where the perfect is argued to be the default marker of anteriority in lieu of the aorist, in Torlak the aorist is somewhat more productive, changing the overall distribution. Descriptively, we identify semantic and morphosyntactic differences between the aorist, the imperfect and the perfect in Torlak compared to standard BCMS. We examine the distribution and usage patterns within the Torlak paradigm, with a focus on the aorist/perfect divide: We also show how the expression of past tense in Torlak is related to the broader framework of ‘Balkan’ evidentiality. Overall, this paper contributes to our understanding of the mechanisms underlying tense expression in South Slavic varieties.