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THE TENSE SYSTEM of LEZGIAN 1. Introduction and Overview

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THE TENSE SYSTEM of LEZGIAN 1. Introduction and Overview 1 THE TENSE SYSTEM OF LEZGIAN MARTIN HASPELMATH Freie Universität Berlin 1. Introduction and overview Lezgian is spoken by more than 350,000 people in southern Daghestan and northern Azerbaijan in the eastern Caucasus. Genetically, it belongs to the Lezgian subgroup of the Nakho-Daghestanian family. The data presented here are mainly from the modern (written) standard language. For a fuller description of Lezgian grammar, see Haspelmath (in prep.).1 This introduction will give an overview of the Lezgian tense-aspect forms. The morphology of the tense-aspect forms is described in section 2, and section 3 describes the uses of these forms. In section 4, some more marginal categories (periphrastic and archaic) are considered, and section 5 contains some di- achronic considerations that might illuminate the present system. Table 1 gives an overview of the main synthetic (i.e. non-periphrastic) tense- aspect forms of Lezgian, using fin ‘go’ as an example. Following the convention of Comrie 1976:12, I capitalize the names of language-particular categories. Table 1. LEZGIAN TENSE-ASPECT FORMS Imperfective fi-zwa ‘is going’ Continuative Imperfective fi-zma ‘is still going’ Future fi-da ‘will go/goes’ Past Imperfective fi-zwa-j ‘was going’ Past Continuative Imperfective fi-zma-j ‘was still going’ Past Future fi-da-j ‘would go’ Aorist fe-na ‘went’ Perfect fe-n-wa ‘has gone’ Continuative Perfect fe-n-ma ‘has still gone’ Past Aorist fe-na-j ‘went earlier’ Past Perfect fe-n-wa-j ‘had gone’ Past Continuative Perfect fe-n-ma-j ‘had still gone’ As Table 1 shows, there are four basic tense forms: the Imperfective, the Future, the Aorist, and the Perfect. The Past can be combined with each of these. Only the Imperfective and the Perfect have a Continuative form, while the Future and the Aorist lack it. 1A brief typological characterization of Lezgian might look as follows: non-rigid SOV; only preposed nominal modifiers; postpositions; strictly ergative case-marking; very little evidence for syntactic accusativity; practically no relation-changing operations (no passive, no raising); non-finite subordination; no agreement; non-pro-drop; overwhelmingly suffixing (agglu- tinating); 16 nominal cases; rich in uvular, ejective, and labialized consonants; palatal and labial vowel harmony; stress on the second syllable of roots. 2 2. The morphology of tense-aspect categories2 Lezgian inflected verb forms are based on three different stems of the verb: the Masdar stem, the Imperfective stem, and the Aorist stem. The Masdar stem is the basis for the Masdar (verbal noun), the Optative and the Imperative; the Imperfective stem is the basis for the Infinitive, the Imperfective, the Future, and the Prohibitive; and the Aorist stem is the basis for the Aorist, the Perfect, and the Aorist converb. There are two morphological verb classes: weak verbs, which are stressed on the root, and strong verbs, which are stressed on the meaningless thematic vowel that comes between the root and the suffixes. Only strong verbs dis- tinguish the three different stems by means of their thematic vowels, whereas the three stems coincide with the root in weak verbs. Table 2 exemplifies the different stems for two strong verbs. Table 2. THE THREE STEMS IN STRONG AND WEAK VERBS strong verb strong verb weak verb gatún ‘beat’ juzún ‘move’ háltun ‘meet’ root gat- juz- halt- Masdar stem gat-ú- juz-ú- halt- Masdar gat-ú-n juz-ú-n hált-un Optative gat-ú-raj juz-ú-raj hált-raj Imperative gat-ú-t juz-ú-z hált-a Imperfective stem gat-á- juz-á- hált- Infinitive gat-á-z juz-á-z hált-iz Imperfective gat-á-zwa juz-á-zwa hált-zawa Future gat-á-da juz-á-da hált-da Prohibitive gat-á-mir juz-á-mir hált-mir Aorist stem gat-á- juz-ú- hált- Aorist gat-á-na juz-ú-na hált-na Perfect gat-á-nwa juz-ú-nwa hált-nwa Aorist converb gat-á-na juz-ú-na hált-na There are only about 100 strong verbs, and the great majority of verbs are weak. Nevertheless, the class of strong verbs is very important since it contains the most frequent verbs, e.g. fin ‘go’, raxun ‘speak’, luhun ‘say’, gun ‘give’, qhun ‘drink’, tun ‘put’, q’un ‘hold’, q˜ acˇ un ‘take’, gˇ un ‘bring’. The primary division is between the Imperfective stem and the Aorist stem. This can be seen from the small number of verbs with suppletive stem formation, shown in Table 3. Table 3. VERBS WITH STEM SUPPLETION Masdar Infinitive Aorist atu-n q˜ we-z ata-na ‘come’ xˆ u-n zˇ e-z xˆ a-na ‘be, become’ t’ü-n ne-z t’ü-na ‘eat’ 2The morphology of Lezgian tense-aspect categories is described in detail in Moor 1985 and Topuria 1959. 3 awu-n iji-z awu-na ‘do’ q˜ un req˜ i-z q˜ a-na ‘become cold’ q’i-n req’i-z3 q’e-na ‘kill; die’ While the Aorist stem vowel is sometimes identical with the Masdar stem vowel (as in juzun in Table 2) and sometimes with the Imperfective stem vowel (as in gatun in Table 2), the Masdar stem and the Aorist stem are always the same in verbs with suppletion, as opposed to the Imperfective stem. This primary division between the Imperfective and Aorist aspectual stems is of course what we expect: Bybee 1985:63-64 observes that "aspect conditions stem changes much more frequently than tense, mood or agreement categories" because "aspect affects the meaning of the verb to a greater degree". Secondary tense-aspect forms are the Continuative and the Past categories. The Continuative is marked by the suffix -ma that replaces -wa in the Imperfective suffix -z(a)wa and the Perfect suffix -n(a)wa: Imperfective ksu-zwa ‘is falling asleep’ acuq’-zawa ‘is sitting down’ Continuative Imperfective ksu-zma ‘is still falling asleep’ acuq’-zama ‘is still sitting down’ Perfect ksa-nwa ‘has fallen asleep, is asleep’ acuq’-nawa ‘has sat down, is sitting’ Continuative Perfect ksa-nma ‘is still asleep’ acuq’-nama ‘is still sitting’ The Continuative cannot be combined with the Future. The notion ‘will still be sitting (down)’ must be expressed lexically (using hele ‘still’). The Past is marked by the suffix -j which can be added to any Non-Past tense-aspect form, as shown in Table 1. It cannot, however, be combined with non-finite forms like the Masdar, the Infinitive or the Aorist converb, or with mood forms like the Imperative or the Optative. Negation is expressed by the suffix -cˇ that follows the tense-aspect suffix and precedes the Past suffix, which is -ir after -cˇ :4 xa-zwa ‘is breaking’ xa-zwa-cˇ ‘is not breaking’ xa-da ‘will break/breaks’ xa-da-cˇ ‘will/does not break’ xa-zwa-j ‘was breaking’ xa-zwa-cˇ -ir ‘was not breaking’ xa-da-j ‘would break’ xa-da-cˇ -ir ‘would not break’ xa-na ‘broke’ xa-na-cˇ ‘did not break’ xa-nwa ‘has broken’ xa-nwa-cˇ ‘has not broken’ xa-na-j ‘broke earlier’ xa-na-cˇ -ir ‘did not break earlier’ xa-nwa-j ‘had broken’ xa-nwa-cˇ -ir ‘had not broken’ Non-finite forms use prefixal negation, e.g. Masdar ta-xu-n ‘not breaking’, Infinitive ta-xa-z ‘not to break’, participle ta-xa-zwa-j ‘who is not breaking’. 3 The re- in these weakly suppletive stems is the only remnant in Lezgian of an imperfective aspect marker r that is much more common in closely related languages (Alekseev 1985:75-89). 4 The Continuative forms are omitted in the following for reasons of space and because they are quite rare anyway. 4 Prefixal negation is also used for the Aorist converb form xa-na ‘having broken’: ta-xa-na ‘without having broken’. Thus, the Aorist converb is not homonymous with the finite Aorist form when it is negated (unlike the non-negated form, cf. Table 2). 3. Uses of tense-aspect categories 3.1. The Imperfective As its name suggests, the Imperfective denotes imperfective situations. This includes ongoing (progressive) events, as in 1, current states, as in 2, and ha- bitual events, as in 3.5 (1) a. Non-Past Jab gu-zwa-ni küne? (K90,3:2)6 ear give-IMPF-Q you:ERG ‘Are you listening?’ b. Past Abur sekin-diz fi-zwa-j, harda wicˇ i-n haldi-kaj they quiet-ADV go-IMPF-PST every(ERG) self-GEN situation-SBEL fikir-zawa-j. (J89:32) think-IMPF-PST ‘They were walking quietly, each of them was thinking about his sit- uation.’ (2) a. Non-Past Wa-z wucˇ luhu-z k’an-zawa? (M90:75) you-DAT [what:ABS say-INF] want-IMPF ‘What do you want to say?’ 5 The following abbreviations of category names are used in the morphemic glosses: ABS Absolutive INEL Inelative ABST abstract noun suffix INESS Inessive ADEL Adelative INF Infinitive ADV adverb MSD Masdar AFUT Archaic Future NEG negation ANTIC Anticausative PER Periphrasis form AOP Aorist participle POESS Postessive AOR Aorist PRF Perfect APRET Archaic Preterit PST Past CND Conditional PT particle CONT Continuative PTP participle COP copula Q question marker DAT Dative SBEL Subelative ERG Ergative SBESS Subessive case FUT Future SBST substantivizer GEN Genitive SRDIR Superdirective IMPF Imperfective SRESS Superessive INDEF indefiniteness marker TEMP Temporal converb 6 The abbreviations following the examples refer to the texts from which they have been taken. See Haspelmath (in prep.) for references. 5 b. Past Zˇ in wicˇ i-n cˇ iragˇ di-n q˜ ene jasˇ amisˇ zˇ e-zwa-j.
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