4 Origin and aspect of the converb in Classical Armenian

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Robin Meyer

Published:

2024

Armenian is an Indo-European language, a family not strongly associated with the category of converbs. Nevertheless, Classical Armenian exhibits one such class of forms, aligning clearly with Haspelmath’s (1995) definition of converbs as a “nonfinite verb form whose main function is to mark adverbial subordination” (1995: 3). Known in the grammar of Armenian as the perfect participle and marked by the morph -eal, this form has three functions: adnominal (= verbal adjective); adverbial (= converb); formation of the periphrastic perfect (with a copula). Con- verbial use is the most common in Classical Armenian, with an average incidence in fifth-century texts of about 52%. This paper argues two points: first, that the dominant converbial use arose from reanalysis of adnominal and copredicative uses, but also under the contact influ- ence of West Middle Iranian languages; second, that there is a difference in verbal aspect between the converb (perfective) and the derived perfect construction (sta- tive-resultative). This difference underlines the necessity of not equating both uses of this verbal form, and the fact that the perfect must be a secondary derivation.

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