Prehesternal

There are two past tenses, a hodiernal-hesternal tense used to refer to 'today' and 'yesterday', and a prehesternal tense used to refer to 'before yesterday', as in the following examples:

It refers specifically to yesterday past and, contrary to the hodiernal tense particle, can never be extended to prehesternal use. It can, in addition, occur concurrently with only the hesternal adverb, zààméǹg 'yesterday'. This particle must appear when hesternal reference is intended, with or without the adverb, zààméǹg 'yesterday'. The prehesternal verbal particle, dáá, is also quite specific in that it can never be used to mark hodiernal and hesternal tenses.

In contrast, no instances of PP occurred in either the today or yesterday contexts, and prehesternal contexts are highly disfavored (.36). Although low in frequency, the prehesternal factor serves as evidence to argue that in Southern Arizona Spanish, situations are temporally anchored to past time reference points located with respect to utterance time. In this study, indeterminate contexts were determined on lack of temporal anchoring, which is left unspecified by the interlocutor ...