aux: auxiliary verb
Auxiliary verbs represent independent verb forms in Middle Persian, which can fully inflect. Nevertheless, they receive a flat structure according to UD rules.
For instance, the pluperfect is formed with the resultative participle of the main verb followed by the ‘past’ of the auxiliary verb, i.e. the resultative participle of the auxiliary verb ēstādan followed by the person and number marking copula verb: (PP (PP+COP)).
- “the authorities who had come”
dastwarān ī mad ēstād hēnd \n authorities REL come stood are.3PL aux(mad, ēstād) aux(mad, hēnd) acl:relcl(dastwarān, mad)
The flat structure results in an ambiguity if one is only to look for the combination of a resultative participle and the person and number marking copula verb: (PP+COP), which forms the so-called ‘past tense’.
- “the authorities who came”
dastwarān ī mad hēnd \n authorities REL come are.3PL aux(mad, hēnd) acl:relcl(dastwarān, mad)
The relation “hēnd is auxiliary of mad” holds for both and only by checking for the absence or presence of another auxiliary, it is possible to decide whether the auxiliary verb is inflected and it is a plurperfect, or not, and it is a ‘past tense’. Hence, the ‘past tense’ cannot be identified by the relation only.
aux in other languages: [axm] [bej] [bg] [bm] [cop] [cs] [de] [el] [en] [es] [et] [eu] [fi] [fr] [fro] [gsw] [gub] [hy] [id] [it] [ja] [ka] [kk] [ky] [lt] [myv] [naq] [no] [oge] [pcm] [ps] [pt] [qpm] [ro] [ru] [sl] [ssp] [sv] [swl] [tr] [u] [urj] [vi] [xcl] [yue] [zh]