43 [IJAL, vol. 76, no. 1, January 2010, pp. 43–70] ç 2010 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0020–7071/2009/7601–0002$10.00 HOW TO TELL A CREEK STORY IN FIVE PAST TENSES 1 Jack B. Martin College of William and Mary Creek (or Muskogee) is among a small number of languages around the world that dis- tinguish multiple tenses based on degrees of remoteness from the time of speaking. Those working on Creek have rarely agreed on the number of tenses or on their mean- ings, however, and have rarely examined the seemingly intricate ways that speakers use tenses in texts. This paper argues that Creek has one future tense and five past tenses. It finds, however, that speakers may cast events within a single time frame in several dif- ferent tenses based on immediacy. That is, just as English speakers will sometimes use present tense in describing past events, Creek speakers will sometimes allow tenses to creep forward from past 5 (remote past) to past 4 or even past 3 as events become more vivid. The Creek data thus provide especially clear support for observations that tempo- ral distance in language may be extended metaphorically to express subjective distance (Dahl 1984, Fleischman 1989, and Hintz 2007). [Keywords: Muskogean, Creek (Muskogee), typology, tense] 1. Introduction. A number of languages around the world have tense systems that are sensitive to degrees of remoteness in the past or future. Ash- ton et al. (1951:122) thus describe Luganda as having near and remote past tenses, and Payne and Payne (1990) describe five past tenses in Yagua rang- ing from the last few hours to a legendary past. Chung and Timberlake (1985:207–9) introduce the term “metrical tense” for systems like these that 1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2005 meeting of the Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the Americas. I am grateful to many discussions over the years with Margaret Mauldin and other Creek speakers. Unless noted, all Creek data in this paper are based on Margaret Mauldin’s speech. Texts and data from earlier periods were re- elicited with her help. The phonemes of Creek are a, a:, i, i:, o, o:, c [tS], f, h, k, l, ¬, m, n, p, s, t, w, y . Nasalized vowels are indicated with a superscript n . The following abbreviations are used in glosses: 1pa = first-person plural agent; 2p = second-person patient; 3p = third-person patient; atn - focus of attention; d = dative; dcl = declarative; dim = diminutive; dir = direc- tional prefix; du = dual; dur = durative; fgr = falling tone grade; fut = future tense; gpl = group plural; hgr = aspirating grade; i = short form of durative -i: appearing in reduced parti- ciples; imper = imperative mood; impf = imperfective; impl = impersonal; ind = indicative; inst = instrumental; lgr = lengthened grade; loc = locative prefix; n = different-subject/non- subject; neg = negative; nfgr = nasalizing = falling tone grade; nzr = nominalizer; p1, p2, p3, p4, p5 = Past 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; prosp = prospective; q = interrogative mood; pl = plural; ref = ref- erential; sg = singular; spn = spontaneous; t = same-subject/subject; top = topic; tpl = triplural (three or more). See Hardy (2005) and Martin (forthcoming) for more detailed coverage of Creek grammar.