Mandatory Auxiliaries + Conjugated Verbs

[Zaarin]

I'm working on a language that I want to be rather verbose and periphrastic, so part of my idea is to have auxiliary verbs that conjugate for aspect/tense and primary verbs that conjugate for person/number/mood/politeness. Is that plausible? Any other advice on making the language unnecessarily bombastic?

[linguoboy]

I'm working on a language that I want to be rather verbose and periphrastic, so part of my idea is to have auxiliary verbs that conjugate for aspect/tense and primary verbs that conjugate for person/number/mood/politeness. Is that plausible?

Offhand, I can think of a couple of North American languages which do something like this.

[Sumelic]

I don't know enough to say if it's plausible or not, but for some reason, I would be less surprised by a division of aspect/tense/person/politeness on the auxiliary and number/mood on the primary verb. I guess the reason is "politeness" marking seems like it's often combined with person marking, and person inflection seems like the kind of thing that usually is marked on the auxiliary when there is one.

I don't know about "bombastic", but another thing that can interact with all of the previous categories in complicated ways is negative marking. And of course, there's always evidentiality.

[Zaarin]

I don't know enough to say if it's plausible or not, but for some reason, I would be less surprised by a division of aspect/tense/person/politeness on the auxiliary and number/mood on the primary verb. I guess the reason is "politeness" marking seems like it's often combined with person marking, and person inflection seems like the kind of thing that usually is marked on the auxiliary when there is one.

I don't know about "bombastic", but another thing that can interact with all of the previous categories in complicated ways is negative marking. And of course, there's always evidentiality.

What you say about auxiliaries makes sense; certainly something to think about. Also about negatives.

I've been debating about whether to use evidentials or not.

[sirdanilot]

Look into the Barbacoan languages of South-America. In these languages all sorts of inflection goes on an 'auxiliary' verb such as 'be' or 'go' or 'say' (for lack of a better term here), and the languages have a closed class of such verbs (for example about 30 or so in Tsafiqui). All other verbal meanings are expressed through coverbs which take little or no inflection. This explanation is a bit simple but you can look into it, I can also send you something if you are interested.

[Zaarin]

I'm not sure that's what I'm going for, though, since I want fully inflected auxiliaries with fully inflected co-verbs.

[sirdanilot]

I'm not sure that's what I'm going for, though, since I want fully inflected auxiliaries with fully inflected co-verbs.

You want to mark all things on both of the verbs? Now go think for yourself a bit: why would people do that all the time? Eventually the auxiliary will just disappear if it doesn't have a function now won't it.

Not to say that what you are looking for is completely absent but then you are looking more into serial verb constructions.

[Zaarin]

I'm not sure that's what I'm going for, though, since I want fully inflected auxiliaries with fully inflected co-verbs.

You want to mark all things on both of the verbs? Now go think for yourself a bit: why would people do that all the time? Eventually the auxiliary will just disappear if it doesn't have a function now won't it.

Not to say that what you are looking for is completely absent but then you are looking more into serial verb constructions.

Well, no, but I mean that I want auxiliaries and co-verbs that are both inflected, but for different information.

[sirdanilot]

Well in some of the Barbacoan languages I mentioned, the coverb receives aspect marking, while the auxiliary receives egophoricity marking (= whether the subject is the speaker or somsone else; it is like a 1 vs. 2/3 person distinction, though a bit more complicated than this). However aspect marking sometimes also goes on the auxiliary or depends on the auxiliary chosen as in Guambiano. It's a very messy system.

I can show you some examples:

Tsafiqui (Ecuador): in this language the auxiliary (to call it that for a sec) is fused into the coverb, here nan 'to lie horizontal', and the latter receives all marking. Evidentiality, 'person' marking, declarative, etc. And yes here it receives it two times for some reason.

man-ka ne-de=le nan-ra-ti-e-ti-e
one-NCL leg-NCL=LOC lie.horizontal-be.POSIT-RP-DEC-RP-DEC
‘One (woman) was lying across his legs.’ (Dickinson 2002; 147)

Cha'palaa(chi) (Ecuador) is a sister language to tsafiqui and does things relatively similar. Some of my data on it is unpublished so I won't give it to you but there are already some publications on it.

Awa pit (Colombia and Ecuador): here we see sometimes aspect marking on the coverb (it can't truly be called a coverb here but oh well) and 'person' marking on the 'auxiliary' verb (a positional verb here)

ap aympihsh=na cama=ta pit-tu tala-y
1s.POS brother=TOP bed=in sleep-IMPFPART lie-2/3
‘My brother is lying asleep in bed.’

Guambiano (colombia): here we see aspect marking on the 'coverb', but the choice of the 'auxiliary' is also for some aspects determined by the aspect. Person marking is on the 'auxiliary'

(12) ñi-pe srəná kuall-ch-ap kə-n
2/3.PROX-TOP tomorrow work-PROSP-NMLZ be-2/3
‘You have to work tomorrow.’ (Vásquez de Ruíz 1988; 120)

Hope this helps you. And no masako I am not going to put all those in bbcode.

[Zaarin]

Thanks for the examples; that's similar to the direction I had in mind. So I'm not stretching plausibility too much, at any rate.

[sirdanilot]

No certainly not, though keep in mind that real life systems are always messier than what you may think up at first, but hey that's innate to any part of conlanging.

[Haplogy]

There's some Dutch dialects, or at least some Dutch speakers, who use almost exclusively AUX+infinitive verb forms.
E.g.

Standard Dutch:
Ik sliep
1s.NOM sleep.PAST

Dialectal:
Ik deed slapen
1s.NOM do.PAST sleep-INF

Not sure if it's exactly what you're looking for, though.

[sirdanilot]

Don't know of any dialect that does that. In our region (Zeeland) this 'doen' auxiliary is used when speaking to children. 'Doe maar spelen' (go ahead and play), for example, is typically a sentence directed at children.

[linguoboy]

There's some Dutch dialects, or at least some Dutch speakers, who use almost exclusively AUX+infinitive verb forms.

That's just a garden variety light verb construction where all of the inflectional information is carried by the non-content verb. Lots of languages make extensive use of those--Basque, Korean, Tibetan, etc. What Zaarin is proposing is considerably more complex than that.

[Zaarin]

There's some Dutch dialects, or at least some Dutch speakers, who use almost exclusively AUX+infinitive verb forms.

That's just a garden variety light verb construction where all of the inflectional information is carried by the non-content verb. Lots of languages make extensive use of those--Basque, Korean, Tibetan, etc. What Zaarin is proposing is considerably more complex than that.

That is correct.

[So Haleza Grise]

Some Australian languages have verbs which are rather lightly inflected, but a clause must incorporate markers in second position that agree with subject and object (sometimes indirect objects) as well as displaying other agreement markers that vary by language. The term for this varies across languages; in Yukulta it's a "clitic complex" for example. But the basic idea is that verbs proper carry some tense/transitivity marking, while more agreement (person agreement, subject/object agreement, some other markers) is contained in this separate thing which you might want to call an auxiliary.

[Zaarin]

Some Australian languages have verbs which are rather lightly inflected, but a clause must incorporate markers in second position that agree with subject and object (sometimes indirect objects) as well as displaying other agreement markers that vary by language. The term for this varies across languages; in Yukulta it's a "clitic complex" for example. But the basic idea is that verbs proper carry some tense/transitivity marking, while more agreement (person agreement, subject/object agreement, some other markers) is contained in this separate thing which you might want to call an auxiliary.

That definitely sounds like what I'm going for. I've also been taking a look at the "conjugated pronouns" in Wolof, which seems like a potentially interesting variant.

[marconatrix]

I'm working on a language that I want to be rather verbose and periphrastic, so part of my idea is to have auxiliary verbs that conjugate for aspect/tense and primary verbs that conjugate for person/number/mood/politeness. Is that plausible? Any other advice on making the language unnecessarily bombastic?

That's almost the exact opposite of what happens in Basque. The semantic verb is some sort of participle or verbal noun marking tense or aspect, while the auxiliary is mostly a pile of person and number agreement affixes with subject, object, indirect object. Only a handful of intransitives are inflected directly.

[Zaarin]

I'm working on a language that I want to be rather verbose and periphrastic, so part of my idea is to have auxiliary verbs that conjugate for aspect/tense and primary verbs that conjugate for person/number/mood/politeness. Is that plausible? Any other advice on making the language unnecessarily bombastic?

That's almost the exact opposite of what happens in Basque. The semantic verb is some sort of participle or verbal noun marking tense or aspect, while the auxiliary is mostly a pile of person and number agreement affixes with subject, object, indirect object. Only a handful of intransitives are inflected directly.

I hadn't thought of looking at Basque even though my language is ergative-absolutive (well, fluid-S), but I'll definitely check that out.