Tense and aspect in Lai Chin

• Main Author: Kavitskaya, Darya
• Other Authors: University of California, Berkeley
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2024
• Subjects: Arts and Humanities
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/178164
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This paper presents a description of the aspectual system of the Tibeto-Burman language Lai Chin (or Lai).' The aspectual system of Lai is very rich and complex, and a complete investigation of Lai aspect is far beyond the scope of this paper, whose goal is merely to provide a general descriptive overview and to examine the semantic and morphosyntactic properties of the aspectual particles. Aspectual distinctions in Lai are mainly represented by a few pre- and post-verbal particles and adverbs with aspectual or combined temporal and aspectual meaning. There seems to be no evidence for a morphological category of aspect in Lai, contrary to the organization of many aspectual systems, as, for example, Slavic languages or, to a lesser extent, English. This is not surprising, since Lai has exclusively verb agreement morphology and is otherwise an isolating or almost isolating language.