Hypoanalysis and aspectual diversification: the Armenian future in diachrony

Old Armenian does not exhibit a separate future tense; future events are commonly expressed by means of modal forms. In Middle Armenian, the historic subjunctive is lost as part of the process of replacing the synthetic present with an analytical, originally progressive form; the historic present indicative takes on subjunctive functions. Later in this period, a future develops by hypoanalysis and, secondarily, univerbation of the former present indicative, whilst an innovative periphrastic form supersedes it; the subjunctive persists. In Modern Eastern Armenian, the new future takes on additional, secondary functions; other, analytical future periphrases have arisen, increasing the aspectual differentiation of the language in analogy to other tenses; not all are equally productive. The synthetic future might be considered an aspectually unmarked form. This paper outlines in as much detail as currently possible the development of the future from Old to Modern Armenian, with particular attention to grammaticalisation and hypoanalysis processes. Furthermore, a corpus-based sketch of the future periphrases in Modern Eastern Armenian is given with a view to proposing a basic diachrony of and motivation for their development.

Cite as: Robin Meyer. 2026. Hypoanalysis and aspectual diversification: the Armenian future in diachrony. In Stefan Hartmann, Lena Schnee (eds.), Futures of the past: The diachrony of future constructions across languages, 265-294. Language Science Press.
Download