Статус эвиденциального перфекта в терском диалекте кумыкского языка
Status of the evidential perfect in the Terek dialect of Kumyk language

Summary/Abstract: This paper aims to describe the relationship between evidentiality and perfect aspect in the Terek dialect of Kumyk language. It also provides the comparison with other Turkic languages and with a focus on comparison with related languages of the Kipchak group. The paper shows that the aspectual form of perfect does not have any evidential restrictions on its interpretation in Terek Kumyk. Additionally, the paper discusses the status of the particle eken/=mken, which is diachronically related to the perfect form of the auxiliary verb, but which is just a particle and not a part of the complex verbal form since it cannot bear the verbal morphology in the current state of the grammar of the Terek dialect of Kumyk language. In addition to the evidential status of the particle =mken, which can be defined as the inferential marker, the paper also discusses its interaction with interrogative semantics (on the basis of polar and wh-questions), adding to the existing typology of evidential-interrogative interactions. The main conclusion which can be made considering the interrogative contexts where =mken particle is either infelicitous or obligatory is that there is no such phenomenon as interrogative flip in Terek dialect of Kumyk language. We will as well provide some diagnostics proving that the interrogative contexts with the investigated evidential particle can be rather defined as conjectural questions (the situation in which the speaker does not expect the listener to answer his question).

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