Ayoreo (Zamuco) as a radical tenseless language

After defining the notion of tenselessness, the paper presents arguments to treat Ayoreo (with exceedingly poor verbal morphology) as a radical tenseless language. Apart from mood, which is overtly expressed by the realis vs irrealis opposition, all possible candidates to the status of temporal-aspectual exponents turn out to be, on closer inspection, no more than adverbial elements, although the Tomaraho dialect of the cognate language Chamacoco might be on the verge of grammaticalizing a temporal morpheme.