Bano, Saira & Butt, Miriam & Deo, Ashwini: Achievement Predicates and Tense Paradigms in Hazaragi
In this paper we investigate and model an interaction between lexical semantics and morphological tense paradigms in Hazaragi, an under-described Eastern Iranian language that is closely related to Dari. Hazaragi is spoken in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also world-wide among the Hazara diaspora. Hazaragi is an SOV language with a complex tense/aspect paradigm. The paradigm exhibits a split in that it shows a past/non-past distinction with certain verbs, while with other verbs the non-past morphology is more restricted. We offer a semantic explanation for the observed pattern and show that achievement verbs lie at the heart of the split. We formally model this interaction between morphology, syntax and lexical semantics within LFG’s modular architecture of grammar. In this, we rely on the proposal for the morphology-syntax interface developed by Dalrymple (2015) and the system for crosslinguistic annotation and calculation of tense/aspect developed by Zymla (2018). We implement a ParGram style grammar fragment for Hazaragi (Crouch et al. 2017, Butt et al. 1999) to model the interface between morphology, syntax and lexical semantics.
December 22, 2022 |
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