Macrolinguistics (Oct 2008)

A SURVEY OF STUDIES ON THE PERFECT AND PLUPERFECT TENSES IN NORTH SAMOYEDIC LANGUAGES

  • Piret Klesment,
  • Ago Künnap

DOI
https://doi.org/10.26478/ja2008.2.2.10
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2, no. 10
pp. 164 – 172

Abstract

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There are too few devices in Samoyedic languages toexpress a completed/ accomplished action, so one of the ways to do it is justthe use of perfect and pluperfect. Samoyedic languages have no common markersfor moods and tenses, only a few of them occur in most of the languagesmentioned. The Samoyedic system of conjugation is mainly based on verbal nouns,its mood and temporal markers mostly coincide with participle and gerundmarkers. The Tundra Nenets perfect is formed by means of the participle markers, the pluperfect – by means of the compoundmarker . In Enetsthe marker -bi as indicates anearlier meaning of the perfective participle that has disappeared by now, thepluperfect is formed by means of the compound suffixes . In Nganasan the marker expresses the past, more exactly theperfective preterit. The perfect has the compound marker -bV (-hV)­+ -tV . Both perfect and pluperfect are used widelyin the languages under observation, particularly in folkloristic texts. Theformation and the use of perfect and pluperfect are mostly similar. As far asthe Samoyedic participle marker -bVis concernd, then G. J. Ramstedt (1952) refers to the Turkic perfect-gerundmarker -p (-yp, -up) and to theMongol preterit perfect marker -bai,-bei, -ba, -be.

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