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This page pertains to UD version 2.

AUX: auxiliary verb

Definition

The only truly auxiliary verb in Armenian is եմ  “be”, and its variant (with separate lemma) լինեմ (լինել)  “be repeatedly / habitually”. It accompanies the lexical verb of a verb phrase and expresses grammatical distinctions not carried by the lexical verb.

Armenian auxiliary verbs can be divided into:

Examples

Note, that fintie present and imperfect forms of եմ  and էի  are also used with the perfect and future participles of the lexical verbs to form periphrastic present perfect (e.g. վազել եմ  “I have run”), (present-)future (e.g. վազելու եմ  “I shall run”) and future-in-the-past (վազելու էի  “I would (intended to) run”). The auxiliaries express aspect, person, number mood and tense (Tense=Pres and Tense=Imp accordingly), participles express aspect and voice.

Note, that in Armenian copulas are also tagged AUX and the definition of copula sentences has been extended to location-existentials (Նա տանն է։ / Նա տանն է լինում։  “He is at home.”) Hence almost all occurrences of եմ  and լինել (լինեմ)  should be now tagged AUX. Only pure existentials without location (Այն եղել է ու կա որպես հուշ։  “It has been and is as a memory.”) have a non-auxiliary լինել  and կամ  which should be tagged VERB.

Armenian modal verbs are not considered auxiliary and they are tagged VERB. Their behavior is only slightly different from other content verbs.

Constructions with կամ  and ունեմ  and resultative participle

Note, that finite form of existentials կամ  “be, exist” and ունեմ  “have” in combination with resultative participle (Նա հագած ուներ թեթև վերարկու։ “He had a light coat dressed.” or Երեկվանից ոչ մի տող գրած չկամ։ “I do not have a single line written since yesterday.” (lit: “I do not exist written no any row since yesterday.”) are tagged AUX (these so-called “experiential forms”, mainly in negativ or interrogative constructions, are analyzed as auxiliary in the Armenian grammar).


AUX in other languages: [bej] [bg] [bm] [cs] [cy] [da] [el] [en] [es] [et] [fi] [fro] [fr] [ga] [grc] [gub] [hu] [hy] [it] [ja] [ka] [kk] [kpv] [ky] [myv] [no] [pcm] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tr] [tt] [uk] [u] [urj] [xcl] [yue] [zh]