Auxiliaries - A Cross-Linguistic Analysis

Shashwat Sanjeev -17816659

July 29, 2021

I Introduction
"The moment a verb is given an infinitive complement, that verb starts down the road of auxiliariness."
- Bolinger 1980
We have seen the word class of Verb Particles -

Verb particles (a) tense/aspect/mood makers – also called auxiliaries (usually only if verbal in form)
(b) uninflecting component of a lexically complex verb
There has been a lot of debate in the linguistic world over a definitive definition of the aux-
iliaries. When we consider Indo-European languages it appears that a definitional property of
auxiliaries requires that they must be the only inflected forms in the verbal complex. We know
about auxiliaries in English falling in this category.
In Hindi there is a fine line between light verbs and auxiliary form of a verbal word -
(1) Hindi
a. mai=ne khir banane ke-liye dhoodh kaadh di-yaa
1 SG = ERG pudding make-INF for milk thicken:MV give-M . SG - LV
“I thickened the milk in order to make pudding."
b. usne kaam kar di-yaa tha.
3SG job do TERMINATE be-M . SG
"He had already done the job."
In (1a), diyaa is used as a light verb - Light verbs contribute some aspectual notion as well as
other subtle semantic notions. In (1b), it is used as a helping verb to the verb kar - by adding the
meaning of termination of the action represented by the verb. Note that in (1a) also, the notion of
completeness is expressed by the light verb owing to our confusion. [1][2]

On the other hand, for a Kuliak language of Northeastern Uganda, called Ik, Serzisko (1991)
defines auxiliaries as particlelike items requiring a finite verb as a predicate, while modals and
aspectuals having nonfinite verbs as their complements are referred to as propositional verbs. In
an Australian language called Ngarinjin, each verb always occurs with a particular auxiliary for
number, tense, modality and aspect.
I will restrict myself with auxiliaries in a narrow sense, in particular with elements that tend to
be referred to also as verbal auxiliaries, auxiliary verbs, and the likes in an effort to figure out their
association with a morpheme or word class - a syntactic or semantic category cross-linguistically,
and as a defined subclass of the Verb particles.

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II What are Auxiliaries cross-linguistically ?

In an endeavour to categorise a Word class of auxiliaries, defining it is the first obstacle since
they look very different in different languages. The ideal way to start would be look at the various
dictionaries of the language(s) for a meaning and examples. Accordingly it was found that the most
frequent notional domains associated with auxiliaries are - tense, aspect, modality & voice. The
auxiliary equivalents of "be" & "have" were the most frequent. This invokes a natural definition that
auxiliaries are morphological defaults inserted to realize inflectional material that is syntactically
“stranded” from the main predicate/verb. Linguists like Chomsky also seem to conjure that syntax
would be the primary definitional parameter.[3]

A Enumerating their properties [3][4]

• Auxiliaries tend to provide expressions for a small range of notional domains, especially for
the domains of tense, aspect, modality, negation and voice.

• They form a closed set of linguistic units.

• They are neither clearly lexical nor clearly grammatical units.

• They also occur as main verbs i.e., a "twin role".

• They express grammatical functions but exhibit, at least to some extent, a verbal morphosyn-
tax. Often, in many languages they are defined as subset of verbs.

• While having some verbal properties, they also show a reduced verbal behavior. Typically,
they may associate only with a restricted spectrum of tense/aspect distinctions and/or verbal
inflections, may not be passivized, and do not have imperative forms, and some authors have
pointed out that auxiliaries may not be independently negated.

• They may not be the (semantic) "main predicate" of the clause.

• They may have two "free variants," where one is the full form (e.g., I will go) and the other
one a reduced form (I’ll go), or one is a clitic and the other an affix.

• They tend to be unstressed or unable to receive contrasting stress.

• They tend to be cliticizable or necessarily clitic.

• They carry all morphological information relating to a predicate, such as marking distinctions
of person, number, tense/aspect/modality, negation, etc. Steele et al. note that auxiliaries
may be expressions of subject marking, subject agreement, aspect, question marking, empha-
sis, evidential, object marking, object agreement, negation, tense, and modality, but this list
does not exhaust the range of functions expressed by elements typically attached as inflections
to auxiliaries.

• Subject agreement also tends to be marked on the auxiliary rather than the main verb .

• While auxiliaries are an obligatory part of finite clauses in certain languages, this is not nec-
essarily so in non-finite or imperative clauses.

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• Auxiliaries may not themselves be governed by other auxiliaries, or only by a limited number
of auxiliaries.

• They do not have a meaning of their own, or do not contribute to the meaning of the sentence
but rather are "synsemantic" and "syncategorematic" to the lexeme to which they apply (typ-
ically the main verb) - that is, they preserve the categorial status of the latter - "verbs whose
function is to indicate the situation in which the main verb operates."

• They tend to occur separately from the main verb.

• They may be bound to some adjacent element.

• Unlike verbs, they may not be nominalized or occur in compounds.

• They tend to occur in a fixed order and in a fixed position in the clause. According to a
typological survey carried out by Steele (1978), there are only three positions they occupy in
the clause - first, second, or final, but the second position appears to be the preferred one,
being used by a clear majority of the languages in her 20-languages sample.

• Furthermore, the following observation by Greenberg appears to be relevant to an under-

standing of auxiliaries: "In languages with dominant order VSO, an inflected auxiliary always
precedes the main verb. In languages with dominant order SOV, an inflected auxiliary always
follows the main verb." An additional generalization has been proposed by Steele, namely
that no language with an SVO or VSO basic word order, or with free word order, has its
auxiliaries in clause-final position.

• In the presence of an auxiliary, the main verb is likely to be used in a non-finite form, fre-
quently carrying with it some morphological element such as a nominalization, infinitive,
participial or gerundival marker.

• Finally, in the presence of auxiliaries, the main verb may be associated with some locative
morphology.

III Cross-Linguistic Generalization into a Class

Now, it is clear that a lot of cognitive appropriations need to be made so as to handle the cate-
gorisation of auxiliaries. We have seen that auxiliaries convey grammatical concepts relating to
notions of tense, aspect etc. Therefore, to conceptualise them into linguistic expressions, I strate-
gise to list some discrete "formal" notions characterising the auxiliaries and then also formulate the
"functional" characteristics for each notion.

A Formal Characteristics
The concrete notions that formally characterise Tense & Aspect, along with the auxiliary verbs used
to express them are [3] -
(i) Location - "be at", "stay at", "live at", "remain (at)", etc.
(ii) Motion - "go", "come", "move", "pass", "stay", etc.
(iii) Action - "do", "take", "continue", "begin", "finish", "seize", "put", "keep", etc.

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(iv) Volition - "will", "-te-aru" (Japanese), "chah - ‘want/like’"(Hindi) etc.

(v) Change-of-state - "werden" (German - to become), etc.
(vi) Equation - "is (like)", etc
(vii) Accompaniment - "be (part of)", "be accompanied by", "be with", etc.
(viii) Possession - "get", "own", "have", etc.
(ix) Manner - "stays in", "looking", "going around", etc.
Clearly, the above nine proposed notions are in no way exhaustive. The general conceptual
form for the proposed nine labels for Tense & Aspect can be tabulated as -

Conceptual form Proposed label

"X is at Y" Location
"X moves to/from Y" Motion
"X does Y" Action
"X wants Y" Volition
"X becomes Y" Change-of-state
"X is (like) a Y" Equation
"X is with Y" Accompaniment
"X has Y" Possession
"X stays in a Y manner" Manner

As an elaboration, consider "-te-aru" in volition (iv). The verb "aru" has a basic meaning of ’be’
or ’stay’ and is used with inanimate subjects. As an auxiliary verb, in the form "-te-aru", it can be
used in conjunction with verbs of volition to express that something is in a certain state as the result
of some purposeful human intervention [7].
(2) Japanese
kiga taoshi-te -aru
tree-NOM fell:TE - ASP NONPAST
"The tree has been felled."

Now consider motion verbs (ii). English movement verbs such as walk, stroll, swim, and slide,
each contains considerable detail about the nature of the movement, and thus are appropriate only
with certain types of subjects. The movement verbs go and come, however, lack specifics concerning
the nature of the movement and thus are appropriate in a much wider range of contexts and hence
as auxiliaries. This also true for hindi words - "jaana(gaya)" and "aana(aaya)".
(3) Hindi
maa lakshmi=kii puujaa sone=ke binaa adhuurii rah
mother lakshmi=GEN . F worship gold=GEN . PL without incomplete stay:MV
jaaye-g-ii
go-FUT- SG : PASSIVE
"Mother Lakshmi’s worship will stay incomplete without gold."

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It is noteworthy that the only verb in Hindi that functions as a modal and does not occur as a
main verb is "sak" - ‘able’. This verb expresses ability and general possibility -
(4) Hindi
bachhaa bol sak-aa
child speak able-M.SG
"The child was able to speak."

B Functional Characteristics
The common grammatical functions that can be derived from the proposed notions are [3]-

Location progressive, ingressive, continuous

Motion ingressive, future, perfect, past, passive
Action progressive, continuous, ingressive, completive, perfect
Volition ingressive, future
Change-of-state ingressive, future
Equation resultative, progressive, perfect, future
Accompaniment progressive
Possession resultative, perfect, future
Manner progressive

For e.g., in the example 3, "rah" - ‘stay’ is the main verb and "jaa" - ‘go’ is the passive auxiliary.
In 5 below, "aa" - ’come’ is the main verb and "rah" - ’stay’ is the progressive auxiliary verb.
(5) Hindi
leela ghar aa rah-ii hai
Leela.F home.M . SG come stay.PROG . F: SG be.PRES .3. SG
"Leela is coming home."

C Overlapping of functions and Overflow Auxiliary Patterns

Consider the following example. The phrase is going to has a verbal source meaning in (6a), where
it is an instance of the Motion Schema ("X moves to Y"), while it is ambiguous in (6b) since it
may have either a verbal or a grammatical meaning of a future tense marker, and in (6c) a verbal
meaning is ruled out - is going to is exclusively a grammatical marker, that is, the Motion Schema
("X moves to Y") is replaced by the schema [X—grammatical concept—main verb] -
(6) Hindi
a. ram jald-hi bhavnagar jaaye-g-aa
ram soon bhavnagar go-FUT- SG . M
“Ram is going to Bhavnagar soon"

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b. ram jald-hi khelne jaaye-g-aa

ram soon to.play go-FUT- SG . M
"Ram is going to play soon"
c. ram jald-hi bimaar par jaaye-g-aa
ram soon sick get go-FUT- SG . M
"Ram is going to get sick soon"
This underlying transition from full verbal concept to a grammatical concept, or an inflected notion
in our case, is called the "Overlap Model of conceptual shift" and is in fact a predictable phe-
nomenon in the development of auxiliaries as emphasized by Marchese (1986) [3]. Thus, taking
into consideration the presented linguistic characterisation of auxiliaries, a suitable definition of
auxiliaries would be -

Definition III.1 An auxiliary is a linguistic item covering some range of uses along the Verb-to-Tense-
Aspect-Mood chain. [3]

Earlier, I stated that syntax would be the primary definitional parameter for auxiliaries. Now,
consider the following instance. Simple forms exist for the (present) imperfective and past (perfec-
tive) as we see in (7a,7b), but an auxiliary "be" appears in the past imperfective (7c). -
(7) Palestinian Arabic
a. katb-at
write.PST. PFV-3 SG . F (Past)
“She wrote.”
b. b-tuktob
B-write.IMPF (Imperfective)
“She usually writes.” (“. . . will write”)
c. kaanat tuktub
be.PST write.IMPF (Past + Imperfective)
‘She used to write.”
This shows an "overflow interaction between aspect and tense". In the overflow pattern, indi-
vidual categories do not require the use of an auxiliary, but certain combinations of categories do
[5]. The second example thus shows that there do exist cases where no single syntactic category is
correlated with the presence of auxiliaries (here "be").

IV Conclusion
Our analysis in III(C) confirms that a definition of auxiliaries would have to be either so general
as to be largely vacuous or else be so specific as to exclude many of the properties commonly
associated with these items.
Many linguists have argued that this characterisation of auxiliaries based on notions and labels
be completely shelved. This, however means that we neglect a rather obvious but peculiar structure
found in the languages of the world or we push the problem into another language structure. A
word class of auxiliaries can exist as a subclass of the verb particles. Obviously this will not be an
absolute Universal - it will be a language universal but we can’t exhaustively take care of all the
many instances of auxiliaries in the languages of the world.

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The languages like Hindi suggest that another way would be to associate a constituent order
typology to distinguish between occurrences of light verbs and auxiliary verbs [2].

References
[1] Melanie Seiss, Universitat Konstanz. Proceedings of the LFG09 Conference. ON THE DIFFER-
ENCE BETWEEN AUXILIARIES, SERIAL VERBS AND LIGHT VERBS, Link : lfg09seiss.pdf

[2] HINDI COMPLEX PREDICATES AT THE. SYNTAX-SEMANTICS INTERFACE by. Shak-

thi Poornima. March 23, 2012, https://arts-sciences.buffalo.edu/content/dam/arts-
sciences/linguistics/AlumniDissertations/Poornima%20dissertation.pdf

[3] Heine, Bernd. Auxiliaries: Cognitive forces and grammaticalization, Oxford University Press
2011.

[4] Steele, Susan M., Adrian Akrnajian, Richard Demers, Eloise Jelinek, Chisato Kitagawa,
Richard Oehrlc, and Thomas Wasow 1981. An encyclopedia of AUX: a study in cross-linguistic
equivalence. (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs, 5.) Cambridge, Mass./London: MIT Press

[5] Bjorkman, Bronwyn M.. “The Syntax of Auxiliaries From a Cross-linguistic Perspective.”
(2011). Link : Bjorkman_2011_SyntaxofAuxiliaries_CLA2011.pdf

[6] Schokker, G. H., and A. Govindankutty Menon. "Linguistic Convergence: The Tamil-Hindi
Auxiliaries." Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 53,
no. 2 (1990): 266-82. Accessed July 29, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/619233

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volition( linguistics)