425

6-3.35 Remote tenses

Two remote tenses were encountered in this re-
search: one direct knowledge tense (RDK) and one in-
direct knowledge tense (RIK). The distinction of direct,
personal knowledge and of indirect (sometimes called non-
personal) knowledge is a linguistic postulate of Aymara
(see 8-2.3). RDK (called personal or near remote) and
RIK (called far, or hearsay remote) were discussed by
Hardman et al. (1975:3.218-222). Only RDK was attested
by Bertonio (1603b) as a paradigm, although RIK 333
occurred in examples of sentences. In contemporary
dialects the most commonly occurring Remote inflections
are the 3-3 suffixes of each tense, as noted by Hardman
et al. (1975:3.219) for La Paz.

All consonant-initial Remote suffixes (except

allomorphs of 3+4) require a preceding vowel.
6-3.35.1 Direct knowledge remote tense (RDK)

Spanish used to elicit: Yol

di. 'I gave it to
him/her. '

Yo le estaba dando.

‘I was giving to him/her.'
6-3.35.11 Structure and distribution (see Figure 6-7)

As in the case of the Desiderative and Remonstra-

tor tenses, this tense appears to represent a