Be, become, or remain: The grammaticalisation of the copulative perfect in Classical Armenian

The Classical Armenian periphrastic perfect consists of a participle in -eal and an initially optional form of a copulative verb. Over the course of the fifth century CE, one copula, em ‘to be’, grammaticalises into a standard, unmarked major use pattern in a process of obligatorification; patterns with other copulas such as linim ‘to become’ and kam ‘to stand, remain’ are retained to a lesser extent and with more specific aspectual semantics. This paper outlines the development of these constructions over the course of the fifth and early sixth centuries on the basis of a corpus of historiographical texts and draws out parallels with the neighbouring West Middle Iranian languages.

Cite as: Robin Meyer. 2024. Be, become, or remain: The grammaticalisation of the copulative perfect in Classical Armenian. In Petr Kocharov, Daniel Kölligan (eds.), Studies in Armenian Grammar and Lexicon, 315–342. Röll.
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