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Studies in Language: Online-First Articles

The development of perfectivity in Khamti Shan

| Payap University
Khamti Shan features the marking of perfectivity comprised of three clause-final particles, one perfective and two imperfectives, each emerging from the basic verbs, yau¹ ‘finish’, u⁵ ‘live’, and nam⁵ ‘(be) extensive’. While the perfective category is straightforward, the imperfective category shows an unusual bifurcation, the first imperfective marker accommodating continuatives and habituals and the second imperfective marker working exclusively with the nominal predicate construction, clauses of potentiality (hortatives, futures), and the progressive construction. All three particles of perfectivity develop from lexical sources, with the pathways ‘finish’ > completive > perfective and ‘live’ > continuous/progressive > imperfective being well-documented across languages. The pathway ‘extensive’ > imperfective, on the other hand, appears unique to Khamti Shan. I motivate the usage of these perfectivity particles (primarily) with a semantic-cognitive analysis.
Keywords: Tai, Shan, Khamti, perfective, imperfective, aspect, grammaticalization
Published online: 02 December 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.19001.ing
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