Development of aspect markers in Arandic languages, with notes on Associated Motion.

Abstract

Languages of the Arandic subgroup of Pama-Nyungan languages of Aus- tralia have developed markers of aspect from a variety of sources, including verb phrases with stance auxiliaries and reduplicated forms. Other origins involve nominalised verb forms and the refunctionalisation of tense suffixes. Some unusual diachronic developments have to do with interactions between aspectual markers and those of the highly developed verbal cate- gory of associated motion. There are shifts in both directions - from aspec- tual to associated motion values as well as extension of associated motion to aspectual meanings. All the posited diachronic changes are inferred by means of reconstruction, since there is virtually no corpus of documents from which changes in real time can be traced.