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Part of
The Perfect Volume: Papers on the perfect
Edited by Kristin Melum Eide and Marc Fryd
[Studies in Language Companion Series 217] 2021
► pp. 87–116

Chapter 4
Structural and functional variations of the perfect in the Lezgic languages

| Institute of Linguistics RAS | HSE University

The paper presents a study of the morphological and semantic properties of the perfects in nine Lezgic languages, the southern branch of the East Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian) language family. Morphologically, the perfects belong to the perfective subsystem. They are usually periphrastic, with a tendency to become synthetic due to auxiliary loss or merger. The functions of the perfects vary among the languages of the group, but mostly include the ‘current relevance’ perfect proper and the resultative (stative). The experiential meaning is associated with the perfect only in a few languages. In two languages (Agul and Archi), the perfect has further evolved into an indirective evidential past, although the diachronically earlier perfect and resultative functions are still retained. Throughout the paper, I compare the perfects to the aorists, which are the most frequent perfective past tenses of the Lezgic languages. The aorists are much less polyfunctional than the perfects and are mostly synthetic, although periphrastic source models are also attested for them.

Keywords: East Caucasian languages, perfect, resultative, indirect evidential, aorist, tense and aspect systems, grammaticalization
Article outline
  • 1.The Lezgic languages: General profile
  • 2.The Lezgic tense and aspect systems: An overview
    • 2.1Aspectual stems
    • 2.2Periphrastic forms
    • 2.3The place of aorists and perfects in the paradigm
  • 3.Variations in the structure of the aorists and the perfects
    • 3.1The aorists
    • 3.2The perfects
  • 4.Variations in the functions of aorists
  • 5.Variations in the functions of the perfects
    • 5.1Perfect proper (‘current relevance’) meaning
    • 5.2Resultative meaning
    • 5.3Experiential meaning
    • 5.4Indirective evidential meanings
  • 6.Towards the diachronic account of the Lezgic perfects
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 9 July 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.217.04mai
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