Aspect markers grammaticalized from verbs in Kamas

Klumpp, Gerson (2005) Aspect markers grammaticalized from verbs in Kamas. Acta Linguistica Hungarica, 52 (4). pp. 397-409. ISSN 1216-8076

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Abstract

The article presents some results of research into aspectual auxiliaries of Kamas (Southern Samoyed; extinct). Code-copied from Turkic, Kamas started to use verbs with salient aspectuality to modify the aspectual meaning content of another verb or the representation of a whole state of affairs. The formal means by which this modification could take place was a converb construction, in which the modified main verb figured as the non-finite verb form (the converb). At the end of the grammaticalization process, some of the auxiliaries ended up as suffixes. Within Kamas sources from the middle of the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century, the various degrees of grammaticalization are documented. The relevant grammaticalization processes are semantic reduction, fixation and formal reduction; the first two processes can be understood as prerequisites for the third process which puts an end to the coexistence of grammaticalized and non-grammaticalized items. The main Kamas auxiliaries are listed and, according to their function, grouped into non-transformative vs. initial-, final-, and momentaneous-transformative auxiliaries.

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