The inflectional patterns of auxiliary verb constructions #
An auxiliary verb construction pairs an auxiliary with a lexical verb, and languages differ in which of the two carries the inflection. The lexical verb is the semantic head whichever way that goes, and it is exactly that mismatch between where the content sits and where the inflection sits that makes the constructions typologically distinctive.
Five macro-patterns exhaust the possibilities: the auxiliary hosts the
inflection, the lexical verb does, both carry the same categories, the
categories divide between them, or they divide with some doubled. Which
categories land where is finer-grained than the pattern and is recorded by
the analysis that needs it, as in Studies/Anderson2006a.lean.
References #
- [anderson-2006a], §1.4, chs. 2-5
The five inflectional patterns of auxiliary verb constructions.
- auxHeaded : InflectionPattern
The auxiliary hosts the inflection and the lexical verb is nonfinite: English have eaten, French va manger.
- lexHeaded : InflectionPattern
The lexical verb hosts the inflection and the auxiliary is grammaticalized: Pipil weli ni-nehnemi.
- doubled : InflectionPattern
Both elements carry the same categories: Gorum miŋ ne-gaʔ-ru ne-laʔ-ru, subject and TAM on each.
- split : InflectionPattern
The categories divide between the elements with no overlap: Jakaltek šk-ach w-ila, absolutive on the auxiliary and ergative on the lexical verb.
- splitDoubled : InflectionPattern
The categories divide, but some are carried by both elements. [anderson-2006a] ch. 5 §5.2 gives thirty-odd exemplars, so this is a common pattern rather than a marginal one.
Instances For
Equations
- AuxiliaryVerbs.instDecidableEqInflectionPattern x✝ y✝ = if h : x✝.ctorIdx = y✝.ctorIdx then isTrue ⋯ else isFalse ⋯
Equations
- One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.