New verb forms?

[linguistcat]

What are some good verbs for deriving new verb forms from in natural languages? I know copulas are common for various meanings, but what others?

[Kuchigakatai]

In English and Romance languages, "to have" is used to mark some sort of completive aspect. This often applies even to involuntary intransitive verbs (e.g. "to blush").

English:
he has blushed
he would have blushed
he had blushed


In Spanish, "to have" is also used to express a result state in transitive verbs. (Note that tener is not yet a true auxiliary in the sense that the construction fails to pass the general test for compound verbs in Spanish: inseparability.)

Spanish:
todo lo tiene preparado 'she has prepared everything, she's got everything ready (emphasis on the ready state of the things)'
(contrast with todo lo ha preparado 'she has prepared everything (emphasis on the completion of her action)')


"To go" is used as an auxiliary to mark the future and future-in-the-past (e.g. in English and French) or the past perfective (e.g. in Catalan).

French:
il va chanter 'he is going to sing, he'll sing'
il allait chanter 'he was going to sing'

Catalan:
ell va cantar 'he sang' (literally, "he goes to sing")
ell va haver cantat 'he had sung' (literally, "he goes to have sung")


In Mandarin, the locative verb 在 zai4 "to be [at/in a place]" is also marks progressive aspect.

我在做比萨饼！
wo3 zai4 zuo4 bi3sa4bing3
1 PROG do pizza
'I'm making pizza!'

[akam chinjir]

Posture verbs are also common, especially for continuous aspect (judging at least by the entries in the World Lexicon of Grammaticalization), though they can also turn into copulas. E.g., sit eating could end up meaning (just) be eating.

If you've got any serial verb constructions you can leverage those. I'd guess come and go are both pretty common, either before or after the verb, for different senses.

[Estav]

"Want" verbs can be a source of desiderative or future constructions. In English, "will" has only progressed to the auxiliary stage, but I remember reading about a language with an affix that is thought to come from a "want" verb. "Know" verbs can develop to mean "can/be able to"--again, in English, this has only gotten to the auxiliary stage, but I'd imagine that there are affixes with that origin in some languages.

[linguistcat]

Thanks everyone. I'll look into these later today and decide what fits my current language and what is already in play, since I'm deriving from a natural proto-language.

[Pabappa]

Scandinavian "find oneself" marks reflexives, I think.

[Imralu]

"Want" verbs can be a source of desiderative or future constructions. In English, "will" has only progressed to the auxiliary stage, but I remember reading about a language with an affix that is thought to come from a "want" verb.

Swahili -taka "want" has given rise to the future marker -ta-

Ninataka kwenda. "I want to go."
Nitakwenda. / Nitaenda. "I will go."

Tunataka kuogelea. "We want to swim."
Tutaogelea. "We will swim."

"Know" verbs can develop to mean "can/be able to"--again, in English, this has only gotten to the auxiliary stage, but I'd imagine that there are affixes with that origin in some languages.

Turkish bil- "know" (wissen, savoir) has given rise to a "can" suffix.

Yüzmeyi biliyorum. "I know how to swim"
Yüzebiliyorum. "I can swim."

Gitmeyi biliyoruz. "We know how to go."
Gidebiliyoruz. "We can go."

[Imralu]

Scandinavian "find oneself" marks reflexives, I think.

Scandinavian languages have an -s suffix derived from the reflexive pronoun sig (or sik or whatever it was in Old Norse). It can be used as a substitute for passives or as a kind of middle voice, and it's also just on some verbs for no obvious reason, like Swedish hoppas "to hope" (cf. Danish håbe) as opposed to Swedish hoppa "to hop".

To find oneself, in Swedish finnas is used for "there is", as in det finns "there is/are".

[Linguoboy]

Korean has a number of endings derived from contracted nominalisations, either forms of the infinitive or an attributive ending followed by a generic noun (e.g. 것 "thing"). For instance:

먹을 것이어요 > 먹을 거예요 > 먹을게요
/mek.ul kes.i.e.yo > mek.ul ke.yey.yo > mek.ul.key.yo
eat-FUT.ATT thing be-INF-POL
"will eat [informal polite]"

The future infix -겠- /keyss/ is derived from a resultive ending -게 /key/ plus the stem of the existential verb 있 /iss/. Similarly, the past tense infix 았~었 /ass ~ ess/ is the infintive ending 아~어 /a ~ e/ plus the same root.

[Nortaneous]

Anything that exists as a periphrastic form in English could probably exist as a derivation for an affix in a conlang, and there are many things that exist as periphrastic forms in English. (Even 'have to' and 'used to', both of which strike me as semantically weird.)

[Vardelm]

(Even 'have to' and 'used to', both of which strike me as semantically weird.)

Using "have" for a modal of requirement or necessity and "used" for a past habitual is weird. I assume the "to" in both of those is part of the verb infinitive, which I have always felt was itself an odd construction. I should maybe look up it's development, but (assuming I'm correct...) having a periphrastic form of a preposition + 1st/2nd person verb form = a noun???? That's just messed up.

[Nortaneous]

I assume the "to" in both of those is part of the verb infinitive, which I have always felt was itself an odd construction.

Diachronically but not really synchronically - they're /-ft-/ and /-st-/, but we wouldn't expect voice assimilation between a verb and a following infinitive marker.

[akam chinjir]

(Even 'have to' and 'used to', both of which strike me as semantically weird.)

Using "have" for a modal of requirement or necessity and "used" for a past habitual is weird. I assume the "to" in both of those is part of the verb infinitive, which I have always felt was itself an odd construction. I should maybe look up it's development, but (assuming I'm correct...) having a periphrastic form of a preposition + 1st/2nd person verb form = a noun???? That's just messed up.

Getting obligation from a have verb is reasonably common, as is deriving nonfinite verb forms like the English infinitive from purpose clauses.