Grounding refers to establishing the time, location or actuality of a situation according to some reference point.
Certain morphosyntactic operations, such as inflection, ground the situation that the clause describes.
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If the operation is... |
Then the reference point is normally ... |
|---|---|
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Temporal |
Now (the time of utterance). |
|
Spatial |
Here (the place of utterance). |
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Modal or evidential |
Actuality (the situation described by the clause did or will actually take place). |
This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library. Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003.