Grammaticalisation et transcatégorialité : le verbe qim-le en soureth

Abstract

This paper develops a morphosyntactic description of a verb of movement and position having a particular functioning in several varieties of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA). The verb found par excellence in our corpus is that which comes from the root qym “to rise / to stand up”. It works as well alone as predicate of an utterance, as a so-called “auxiliary” verb in a periphrastic structure. It is semantically characterized by a "concrete" meaning denoting a change in positioning. The basic semantism can be subjected to an abstraction process which allows the verb to combine with any verb in an asyndetic construction. It thus functions as an auxiliary. In addition, the semantic abstraction of this verb tends to grammaticalize it more with a discursive function.