Recent literature has debated the nature and robustness of distinctions between pronominal tenses and existential tenses, between absolute tenses and relative tenses, and between perfect aspects and relative tenses. In this paper, we investigate anteriority markers in Javanese and Atayal, two distantly related Austronesian languages. On the basis of a range of empirical diagnostics, we propose that the markers tau in Javanese and -in- in Atayal are relative past tenses with existential semantics. We demonstrate that plausible alternative analyses are not tenable: these markers do not have pronominal tense semantics and they are not perfect aspects despite their salient ‘experiential’ interpretation. Further, we claim that a single language can possess both pronominal and existential tenses. Our diagnostics show that while tau and -in- are existential past tenses, Javanese and Atayal each also have a pronominal tense morpheme which is phonologically null and which pragmatically interacts with tau and -in-.

最近的文献争论了代词时态和存在时态之间、绝对时态和相对时态之间以及完成方面和相对时态之间区别的性质和稳健性。在本文中，我们研究了爪哇语和泰雅语这两种远缘南岛语言中的先行标记。在一系列经验诊断的基础上，我们建议爪哇语中的标记tau和 -在- 在泰雅语中是具有存在语义的相对过去时。我们证明了看似合理的替代分析是站不住脚的：这些标记没有代词时态语义，尽管它们具有显着的“经验”解释，但它们并不是完美的方面。此外，我们声称一种语言可以同时具有代词和存在时态。我们的诊断表明，虽然tau和 - in - 是存在性过去时，但爪哇语和泰雅语也各有一个代词时态语素，它在语音上是无效的，并且在语用上与tau和 - in -相互作用。