Verbal aspect and personal pronouns: The history of aorist markers in north Vanuatu

Alexandre François (1)

1 LACITO - Langues et civilisations à tradition orale

Among the seventeen languages spoken in the Banks and Torres groups of north Vanuatu, eleven share a TAM category whose functions include sequential, generic, subjunctive, prospective and imperfective. This aspect, labeled here “aorist”, also displays cross-linguistic formal similarities: everywhere, the aorist marker shows allomorphic variation depending on the person of the subject. After comparing the eleven languages concerned, I propose to reconstruct their protosystem as a set of four portmanteau proclitics {*gu–*u–*ni–*(k)a} combining aspect and person.

Mots clés: verbal aspect; personal pronouns; aorist; Vanuatu; Banks and Torres

Domaines: Linguistique

Alexandre François. Verbal aspect and personal pronouns: The history of aorist markers in north Vanuatu. Andrew Pawley & Alexander Adelaar. Austronesian historical linguistics and culture history: A festschrift for Bob Blust, Canberra: Australian National University, pp.179-195, 2009, Pacific Linguistics. ⟨halshs-00525561⟩