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REFLECTIONS ON HABITUALITY ACROSS OTHER GRAMMATICAL
CATEGORIES
Xabibullina Liliya Jaxonovna
İngliz tili kafedrasi o'qituvchisi Buxoro davlat tibbiyot instituti
liliya86xab@gmail.com
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14676529
The observation that habituality may with evidentiality is typologically not surprising. In
the Yukaghir languages mentioned above, a distinction between future and non-future tense is
made. Correspondingly, the use of a particular evidential expression strongly depends on tense
and aspect values. For example, if a verb is marked for the continuous aspect and if it occurs
with an inferential evidential marker, the embedded proposition is anchored in the past. This
restriction disappears as soon as a direct realis marker is attached to verb stem. In this case,
both past and present tense anchoring is possible. What is interesting in this context is that no
temporal-evidential restrictions arise when the speaker quantifies habitually over embedded
proposition; see also Huber and Cahlon, this issue, for similar (diachronic) observations on
Shumcho and Quzco Quechua, respectively. Why habituality appears to be compatible with both
types of evidential expressions and overwrites temporal restrictions observerd for the
aspectual values still remains an open issue.
A completely different picture arises respect to Khakha, a Mongolian language. According
to Brosig and Skribnik (2018: 562), the presence or absence of evidential marking is rare if a
statement is interpreted habitually. On the other hand, if the speaker refers to a simple
temporary statement using a progressive form, an evidential expression has to be used. More
in-depth cross-categorical studies are needed in order to understand this variation between
Yukaghir and Khalkha. In a similar vein, in Qiang, a Tibeto-Burman language mainly spoken on
the eastern edge of Tibetan plateau in the mountainous northwest part of Sichuan Province
(China), Lapolla (2003: 67) observes an interesting relation between habituality and evidential
strategies. The default inferential morpheme is k: depending on the event and the information
source, it can express either inferentiality or mirativity in sense claimed by DeLancey (1997,
2001,2012). In fact, if the speaker having access to inferred evidence reports about a state or a
perfective situation, (s)he can do so by using one of the two morphemes: i) the adverbial phrase
xsuni ’seems’, ii) the possibility marker tan or lahan. However, the choice of the embedded
proposition is interpreted episodically or habitually:
Generally, the inference marker is used for single instances of an event, such as if someone
was supposed to quit smoking, but then the speaker sees cigarette butts in an ashtray, the
speaker could use the inference marker to comment that (it seems) the person had smoked. If
was discussed as a habitual action, then again generally the construction with construction with
[tan] or [ lahan] would be used. (LaPolla 2003: 67)
It needs to be examined more systematically to what habituality and evidentially may
affect each other. Not much is known about their interdependency, but see Huber (this issue)
on Shumcho and Bhat (1999) on other Tibeto-Burman languages, for some interesting
observations. Both categories seem to be connected diachronically, too. Nikolaeva and Tolskaya
(2001: 461) report that in Udihe, a Tungus language spoken by approx. 100 people in the
southern part of the Russian Far East, the reported speech marker gune goes back to a habitual
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form of the verb ‘say’. How this happened requires further investigation, but it is reasonable to
assume that diachronic pathway of development relies on some common modal feature
common to habituality and evidentiality.
A similar observation has been made by Tatevosov (2005) considering a recurrent
diachronic pathway between habitual and future forms and suggesting that both underlie a
common ability modal (cf. Kozlov on Moksha Mordvin this issue). Relatedly, it seems that
nominalizations can also be a source for modal genericity that feed the formation of habitual
constructions (see Cahlon on Cuzco Quecha and Huber on Shumcho, this issue).
Moving on to consider the interaction between habituality and tense, and in some contrast
to the semantic and diachronic affinity between habituality and future time reference, in has
been observed by typologists that habituality is more richly expressed in the past tense than in
the present (cf. Bybee et al. 1994: 155, Crisofaro 2006: 154). This need not to be a property
specific to habitual, if one considers the Romance languages, since there the past tense is more
nuanced in terms of grammatical aspect compared to non-past tense forms. This presumably
goes back to the tight affinity noted in the previous section between habituality and
grammatical aspect. However, in some cases, even outside the Romance languages, the past
tenses. English used to and the Hebrew periphrastic construction, which is only available when
the auxiliary is inflected for past tense, exemplify such a state of affairs.
References:
1.
Barcz, Barbara. 2009. Aspect and expressions of habituality in Polish. Lacus Forum 35. 81-
89. Bertinetto, Pier Marco & Alessandro Lenci. 2012. Habituality, pluractionality, and
imperfectivity. In Rjbert I. Bibnnik (ed.), The Oxford handbook of tense and aspect, 852-880.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2.
Bhat, Darben N. Shakara. 1999. The prominence of tense, aspect and mood. Amsterdam &
Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
3.
Philadelphia: John Benjamins
4.
Binnick, Robert I. 2005. The markers of habitual aspect in English. Journal of English
Linguistics 33(4). 339-369.
5.
Binnick, Robert I. 2006. ‘Used to’ and habitual aspect in English. Style 40(1). 33-46.
6.
Bonomi, Andrea.1997. Aspect, quantification and when-clauses in Italian. Lingustistics
and Philosophy 20(5). 469-514.
7.
Brosig, Benjamin & Elena Skribnik. 2018. Evidentiality in Mongolic. In Alexandra Y.
Aikhenvaild (ed), The Oxford handbook of evidentiality, 554-579. Oxford University Press.
