The Grammaticalization of Aktionsart enclitics: an illustration
The stages (I to IV) of grammaticalization of enclitics, which come from an active (SA) verb are shown in Chart 1, together with the number of the example which illustrates each stage.
Enclitics which come from a stative (SO) verb go through the same stages, with one difference: stages II and III are undistinguishable because stative verbs cannot take any cross-referencing prefixes (discussed in §2.2.1). See Chart 2.
The four stages of grammaticalization of an active intransitive (SA) prefixed verb are illustrated with-dhala ‘come unstuck, peel, be scratched’ (underlined).
The three stages of grammaticalization of an Aktionsart enclitic derived from an SO verb are illustrated with kahwi ‘wake up, be early in the morning’ in examples (19)–(21).
Most of these Aktionsart enclitics derive from verbs with very specific meanings. This seems unusual, since linguistic expressions serving as a source for gram maticalization tend to have fairly general meanings (Heine, Claudi and Hünne meyer 1991:38–9). We will return to this in §4.1.3.
Enclitics which are not employed as independent predicates (though they could have been, in the past — see §4.4) can be used as modifier verbs in ambient serial verb constructions, or as enclitics.
These two stages of grammaticalization are shown in Chart 3. Relevant examples are given in brackets. The two stages of grammaticalization are illustrated by the directional-thepi ‘into water’ (underlined). In (22) it is used as a modifier verb in a serial verb construction (in square brackets), and in (23) it is used an an enclitic to the verb.
This enclitic cannot be used as an independent predicate. (23a) is ungrammatical.
However, unlike aspect, tense-evidentiality marking or sequencing enclitics, these enclitics can be used as a one-word response to a ‘clarification’ question. Such a question to clarify (22) or (23) could be (24). The one-word answer is (25). Note that the enclitic carries a primary stress; in this case it may be possible to consider it a modifier verb rather than an enclitic (stage I in Chart 3).
