3. Jun 2025
Matteo De Chiara
Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO), Paris
Centre de Recherche sur le Monde Iranien
Grammaticalisation shown through Pashto
Abstract: The verbal system of the Iranian languages, from the earliest phase to modern times, has undergone several restructurings. Originally, the ancient system, inherited from Proto-Indo-European, expressed a certain number of oppositions (TAM) analytically, in particular with the distinction between primary and secondary inflections, different apophonic degrees, suffixations and prefixations, etc. The various phonetic erosions that have occurred over time have undermined the expression of fundamental semantic oppositions: for example, the tendency in Iranian languages to lose final vowels and sometimes consonants has compromised the distinction between primary and secondary inflections, with the consequent risk of threatening temporal oppositions. In response to these ‘simplifications’, the system re-established temporal and aspectual oppositions, as for instance the re-creation new verbal forms to express past tenses (the old past participle in *-ta-) or perfect tense (a verbal noun in *-aka-).
After a quick presentation of the Pashto verbal system, in this presentation I will show the different grammaticalisations through which the Pashto verbal system has come to its present form, which have affected, among other things, the different verb categories and the aspectual system. Therefore, I will present in more detail the perfective preverb wə́- and the various verbal frontiers.
Gemeinsame Veranstaltung mit dem Institut für Iranistik, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften.