Non-IE auxiliary verbs

[Sacemd]

Does anyone have any good resources on auxiliary verbs in a non-IE language?

[dhok]

I do know Finnish uses "to be" plus a participle to form the perfective aspect. Finnish, however, has been in contact with IE languages long enough that its verbal system looks more Indo-European than many an actual Indo-European language, not just in inflection but in usage (the TAM system is very IE). I don't know enough about any other non-IE languages to tell you...doesn't Japanese have a few auxiliaries?

[Chagen]

A huge amount of Japanese's verbal "conjugation" are actually just auxillaries attached to the end of a special form of the verb. After being attached, they take inflections themselves.

[linguoboy]

A huge amount of Japanese's verbal "conjugation" are actually just auxillaries attached to the end of a special form of the verb. After being attached, they take inflections themselves.

Ditto for Korean (to the surprise of no one).

See also the Turkish auxiliary i-, a cliticised defective verb which serves as a copula in certain circumstances and figures in the formation of past and inferential tenses.

Basque is also notorious for its auxiliaries since they're polypersonal in addition to encoding TAM.

[Legion]

Turkish.

Gelmek = to come
Geliyorsun = you are coming
Geleceksin = you will come

idin = you were (copula)

Geliyordun (< geliyor idin) = you were coming
Gelecektin (< gelecek idin) = you will have come/you would be coming

In fact many Turkish verbal inflections seem to derive from earlier verbs. The present continuous -iyor- is from an an earlier verb yorımak, "to walk"; the abilitative (gelebiliyorsun = you can come) transparently derives from bilmek, "to know".

NE: damn you linguoboy

[marconatrix]

You should certainly check out Basque. The number of fully inflected verbs has apparently decreased over the centuries and now only a dozen (or less?), mostly intransitive verbs are inflected. Otherwise some kind of participle marked for tense/aspect is used with one of (IIRC) four auxilaries, which agrees with agent, patent and indirect object where appropriate. Basically the syntactic verb ends up being little more than a big pile of affixes in the more extreme cases.

[Drydic]

You should certainly check out Basque. The number of fully inflected verbs has apparently decreased over the centuries and now only a dozen (or less?), mostly intransitive verbs are inflected. Otherwise some kind of participle marked for tense/aspect is used with one of (IIRC) four auxilaries, which agrees with agent, patent and indirect object where appropriate. Basically the syntactic verb ends up being little more than a big pile of affixes in the more extreme cases.

The best part is that Basque borrowed that participle marker from Latin (it's often -atu.)

[Sacemd]

I like those Basque auxiliaries. Exactly what I was looking for.

Does anyone know the etymology of Japanese -iru-forms (as in mite iru (is seeing) and matte iru (is waiting) They look suspiciously much like their English equivalent.

[linguoboy]

Does anyone know the etymology of Japanese -iru-forms (as in mite iru (is seeing) and matte iru (is waiting) They look suspiciously much like their English equivalent.

"Suspiciously much"? Because the idea of adding an auxiliary to a participle to form a perfective is just so recherché that no two languages could possibly have innovated it independently?

We're not talking about something like combining the present tense of "go" with an infinitive to form a periphrastic simple past. (If there's another language besides Catalan which has that, then I really want to know.)

[Sacemd]

My point is that both languages use a similar verb (iru= to exist (animate)). So I was wondering why this verb was chosen and not some other.

[Terra]

Japanese examples here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_v ... on#te_form
Also this: http://www.scribd.com/doc/19106483/All- ... iary-Verbs (Note how things that English can express with only an adverb+verb are expressed with an auxillary+verb in Japanese.)

You should certainly check out Basque. The number of fully inflected verbs has apparently decreased over the centuries and now only a dozen (or less?), mostly intransitive verbs are inflected. Otherwise some kind of participle marked for tense/aspect is used with one of (IIRC) four auxilaries, which agrees with agent, patent and indirect object where appropriate. Basically the syntactic verb ends up being little more than a big pile of affixes in the more extreme cases.

So, does that mean that now a) most verbs aren't inflected, or b) most verbs are "light" and are combined with one of the few that is inflected?

[Richard W]

So, does that mean that now a) most verbs aren't inflected, or b) most verbs are "light" and are combined with one of the few that is inflected?

It's intended to mean (b). And if you were being picky, I believe what was written does mean (b).

[Terra]

(Tangent from the main topic, but still interesting.)

So, in Basque, how does a light verb decide what helper/auxiliary verb to take? Is there like one for movement, one for hitting/cutting, one for giving, etc? (This reminds me of counters for nouns in CJK, but for verbs instead. I've also been thinking of doing this for a conlang, incidentally.)

[linguoboy]

My point is that both languages use a similar verb (iru= to exist (animate)). So I was wondering why this verb was chosen and not some other.

Verbs of existence are crosslinguistically the single most popular choice for auxiliary verbs there is. What's to explain?

[merijn]

There are two common ways in which verbs that are originally existential verbs can become auxiliaries. They involve the extension from existential verbs (There is a cat) to locative copula (there is a cat in the garden => a cat is in the garden) to eventually be a copula for other categories such as adjectives. The first way involves its use as a locative copula and comes from the copula plus a locative version of a verbal noun or infinitive. For instance Dutch Ik ben aan het eten "I am eating " lit. "I am at the eating". My guess is that this is the most common source for imperfect constructions crosslinguistically. I have been told that the English construction is also derived from this but with the preposition elided over time. The second one involves the copula followed by a participle. This looks like the English be +ing constructions (although the English construction has a different origin as said above). My impression, but I cant really quote languages (Zulu sort of follows what I describe below, but with too many caveats to be a good example) is that a language for instance makes a morphological distinction between perfect on the one hand and perfective and imperfective on the other hand, so you use one form for "I eat" and "I am eating", but a different form for "I have eaten (and therefore I am not hungry). However, in this hypothetical language, there is a verb form for the future of the non-perfect form, but not for the perfect form. To fill in the gap a future form of the copula is used with an participle for the perfect, so something along the lines of I willbe havingeaten for "I will have eaten".

[Drydic]

There are two common ways in which verbs that are originally existential verbs can become auxiliaries. They involve the extension from existential verbs (There is a cat) to locative copula (there is a cat in the garden => a cat is in the garden) to eventually be a copula for other categories such as adjectives. The first way involves its use as a locative copula and comes from the copula plus a locative version of a verbal noun or infinitive. For instance Dutch Ik ben aan het eten "I am eating " lit. "I am at the eating". My guess is that this is the most common source for imperfect constructions crosslinguistically. I have been told that the English construction is also derived from this but with the preposition elided over time.

Yep. A colloquial archaism (which may be present in Appalachian English, I'm not sure) of it is exemplified in I'm a thinkin' about it.

[Salmoneus]

There are two common ways in which verbs that are originally existential verbs can become auxiliaries. They involve the extension from existential verbs (There is a cat) to locative copula (there is a cat in the garden => a cat is in the garden) to eventually be a copula for other categories such as adjectives. The first way involves its use as a locative copula and comes from the copula plus a locative version of a verbal noun or infinitive. For instance Dutch Ik ben aan het eten "I am eating " lit. "I am at the eating". My guess is that this is the most common source for imperfect constructions crosslinguistically. I have been told that the English construction is also derived from this but with the preposition elided over time.

Yep. A colloquial archaism (which may be present in Appalachian English, I'm not sure) of it is exemplified in I'm a thinkin' about it.

While the regular use of this is, aiui, quite limited to certain dialects, it's still found more widely in set phrases and in poetic/archaic registers. The example that springs to mind is the Dylan song, "The Times They Are a-Changin'".

[T.H.White's "The Once and Future King" sees one character berating another for having been "a-flibbertigibbeting about with a lot of want-wits". This may not represent widespread contemporary usage, however...]

Similarly, traditional Hiberno-English (and stereotypical Irish speech patterns ever since) used "after" with an active participle to show the perfect tense: "she's after doing the washing" = "she has done the washing", "she's after denying it" = "she has denied it", etc.

[Nortaneous]

Verbs are a closed class in Chechen, and borrowed verbs come in as nominals plus the auxiliary verb dan 'to do'.

[Hallow XIII]

Similarly, traditional Hiberno-English (and stereotypical Irish speech patterns ever since) used "after" with an active participle to show the perfect tense: "she's after doing the washing" = "she has done the washing", "she's after denying it" = "she has denied it", etc.

Which is a direct calque on Irish; in that language, a construction with tar éis ('after') is used to the same effect: Tá mé tar éis snámh = I swam just now. This is equivalent to the French aller de V construction, which is also a good example of auxiliaries (although both of these are IE languages so this post is probably useless).

[Ulrike Meinhof]

This is equivalent to the French aller de V construction

Venir de, rather?

[Hallow XIII]

This is equivalent to the French aller de V construction

Venir de, rather?

Oops, yes.

[Astraios]

(Tangent from the main topic, but still interesting.)

So, in Basque, how does a light verb decide what helper/auxiliary verb to take? Is there like one for movement, one for hitting/cutting, one for giving, etc? (This reminds me of counters for nouns in CJK, but for verbs instead. I've also been thinking of doing this for a conlang, incidentally.)

There's just an intransitive (/copula) and a transitive (/possessive):

gizon bihurtu da man become-PTCP 3.ABS-INTR she turned into a man, she was turned into a man
gizon bihurtu du man become-PTCP 3.ABS-TRAN he turned her into a man

gizona da man-ABS 3.ABS-INTR he is a man
gizona du man-ABS 3.ABS-TRAN she has a man

, which conjugate almost all the other verbs, including other auxiliaries like egin do:

dirua trukatu da money-ABS exchange-PTCP 3.ABS-INTR money was exchanged
dirua trukatu du money-ABS exchange-PTCP 3.ABS-TRAN he exchanged money

bidaia egin da voyage.ABS PTCP-do-PTCP 3.ABS-INTR a trip was taken
bidaia egin du voyage.ABS PTCP-do-PTCP 3.ABS-TRAN she took a trip, she travelled

, so that the only verbs which conjugate by themselves are very few, among them egon (Sp. estar), joan go, etorri come (and even they need the basic auxiliaries to form compound tenses):

etxean dago house-DEF.LOC 3.ABS-PRS-be he is at home
etxera doa house-DEF.DAT 3.ABS-go he goes home
etxera etorri da house-DEF.DAT come.PTCP 3.ABS-INTR he has come home

As to which "actual" auxiliary is chosen (as opposed to the in-/transitive auxiliary) it's mostly the usual suspects you might expect from English: do, have, become, take, etc. Nothing as exciting as classificatory auxiliaries according to the type of action.

[marconatrix]

The next diachronic stage is when the participle, the finite auxiliary and maybe a few other bits and pieces all fuse into a single phonological word ... then you get some really 'interesting' (i.e. horrendous) inflexion systems ...

[Astraios]

Since I'm back in the UK and have my Lakota dictionary to hand again, I might as well copy some examples from its section on auxiliary verbs:

Ablág mahíŋgle. ablákA ma-hiŋglÁ
I suddenly became quiet. quiet 1S.STA-suddenly

Nuŋwé makápiŋ. nuŋwÁŋ ma-kapíŋ
I don't feel like swimming. swim 1S.STA-reluctantly

Khúš amáye. khúžA a‹ma›yÁ
I am getting sick. sick gradually‹1S.STA›

"Auxiliaries share some common features: (1) they trigger terminal consonant contraction of verbs that allow it [written in the gloss with a final majuscule -A] [...] and (2) conjugation takes place on the auxiliary verb and not on the main verb (the main verb, however, can often take object affixes)."

As can be seen here, Lakota auxiliaries often translate literally to manner adverbs in English. There are of course other sorts of auxiliary:

Ú maší. ú ma-ší
She told me to come. come.PRG 1S.STA-command

Waš'ág-ič'ila. waš'ákA ič'i-la
He considers himself strong. strong RFL-consider (written as one word because -la doesn't have independent stress)

Ačhípȟe wačháŋmi. a‹čhi›pȟÁ wačh‹m›íŋ
I tried to hit you. hit‹1S.ACT;2.STA› intend‹1S.ACT›

And the causative auxiliaries -yA and -khiyA (again, written as one word because they don't have independent stress):

Čhaŋzémaye. čhaŋzé-ma-yA
He made me angry. angry-1S.STA-CAU

Yulmákhiye. yútA-ma-khiyA
She made me eat it. eat.TRA-1S.STA-CAU

[marconatrix]

What is the basis for describing e.g. khiyA as an auxiliary rather than an inflexion/affix?