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Перфект и смежные значения в агульском языке
The paper describes the group of perfective past tenses in Aghul (Lezgic, East Caucasian), focusing on the expression of the perfect meaning. There are four verbal forms which can express the meaning of the perfect ‘family’; at the same time, it is not obvious whether Aghul can be qualified as a language with a dedicated perfect form. All the four forms in question are periphrastic in origin, with the perfective converb or participle of the main verb and the postpositional auxiliary in the present tense. The Aorist is a typical perfective past used in narratives, although it is employed in the immediate (‘hot news’) contexts as well. The “participial” Aorist has an experiential or existential meaning, which is commonly associated with perfects. The Resultative is a polyfunctional form which expresses both perfect and resultative meanings, as well as indirect evidentiality in the past (in the latter function, it is a frequent tense used in ‘second-hand’ narratives). Finally, the “participial” Resultative has a narrower perfect meaning and introduces a currently relevant situation as already “known”, the function of the corresponding clause being explanatory or confirmatory. Thus, Aghul can be said to possess two perfect-like forms, one with a wide distribution, and another with a more narrow distribution than expected of a ‘classical’ current-relevance perfect.
Each of the four forms has a counterpart with the ‘pluperfect’ structure, including the perfective converb or participle and the auxiliary in the past. These forms express the meanings that are typical of pluperfects cross-linguistically, including the resultant state in the past, the anteriority in the past, ‘discontinuous’ past etc.