Search results for "tense-aspect morphology"

The Tense-Aspect system between ontogeny and phylogeny: Evidence from the Proto-Indo-European “Injunctive”

2006

This paper examines early inflectional morphology related to the tense-aspect system of Pre-Indo-European by establishing a correlation between ontogeny and phylogeny in language acquisition and development. It will be argued that historical linguistics can shed light on the long-standing debate over the emergence of tense-aspect morphology. More specifically, the so-called Injunctive forms, which are assumed to be the most ancient verbal inflected items tracing back to the Pre-Indo-European language (see, among others, Lehmann 2002), permit us to infer that the initial grammar of the Proto-language was lacking tense morphology. In other words, the residual category of the Injunctive, which…