3 The Noun Phrase
4 The Verb Complex
4.8 Complement verbs
4.8.2 Modal complements
Modal complements constitute a group of partly grammaticalized verbs whose primary meaning is to express deontic modality. They add the meaning of ability, necessity or possibility to the main verb, reflecting the speaker’s attitude to the realization of the event.
Wutun modal complements are summarized by Table 13.
Table 13. Modal complements dio, ‘must’
hai, ‘to know how’
kek, ‘to be able to’
ddo, ‘to want’
wa-la, ‘to be possible’
ma-la,‘to be impossible’
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While all modal complements express deontic modality, the syntactic constructions in which they can occur vary. Modal complements occur either as suffixes after the main verb (as in 308) or in clause chains (as in 309):
(308) gu menzo do-tala wanlan-dio-yek 3SG tomorrow arrive-TERM do-must-EGO ‘S/he must work until tomorrow.’ (Xiawu Dongzhou)
(309) adia ni zang jja-la-gu-da
monk 2SG Tibet visit-INCOMPL-COMPL-CONSEQ
wa-la-li sho-ma
be possible-INCOMPL-SEN.INF QUOT-RES
‘Monk, for you it will be possible to go to Tibet (lit. when you visit Tibet, it will be possible), (the lama) said…’ (ELDP, corpus WT09_4)
In (308) the modal complement -dio, ‘must’ occurs as suffix right after the main verb wanlan,
‘to do’ without any intervening morphology, while in (309) the modal complement verb wa-la, ‘to be possible’ occurs in a clause chain. The main verb jja, ‘to visit’ is marked with the consequential non-final suffix -da expressing the logical and temporal relationship between the two verbs, and the modal complement wa-la functions as an independent verb that takes the evidential marker -li (clause-chaining constructions are discussed in detail in Section 10.1). While some modal complements (notably dio, ‘must’ and hai, ‘to know how’) occur directly after the main verb, some of the modal complements (notably kek, ‘to be able to’, wa-la, ‘to be possible’ ma-la ‘to be impossible’ and ddo, ‘to want’) always occur in clause-chains.
The complement dio, ‘must’ (SM nominalizer de Ⲵ + modal verb yào 㾱, ‘want’) indicates obligation or necessity of an event. It is used as a complement verb directly attached to the main verb:
(310) gu menzo do-tala wanlan-dio-yek 3SG tomorrow arrive-TERM do-must-EGO ‘S/he must work until tomorrow.’ (Xiawu Dongzhou)
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(311) dangma zang jja-la qhi-la
long ago Tibet visit-COND go-COND xhen-ma qhi-dio-li
walk-COORD go-must-SEN.INF
‘A long time ago, if you went to Tibet, you had to go on foot.’ (ELDP, corpus WT09_4)
Complement hai, ‘to know how’ (SM huì Պ, ‘can, to know how’) expresses the speaker’s ability to perform an action. It is used as a complement verb directly attached to the main verb:
(312) da ngu taima qhi-hai-gu-lio
now 1SG bike ride-can-COMPL-PFV
‘Now I know how to ride a bike!’ (Bike)
(313) nga-mu yidaze zhungo bozhe kan-hai-yek 1-COLL all China newspaper read-can-EGO
‘We all know how to read Chinese newspapers.’ (Xiawu Dongzhou)
Complement kek, ‘to be able to’ (SM kěyi ਟԕ, ‘can, to be able to’) indicates the possibility of an event. It is used as a chain-final verb in clause chains:
(314) nga-mu qhichai mai-la be-kek-yek 1SG-COLL car buy-COND NEG-be able-EGO
‘We are not able to buy a car.’ (Xiawu Dongzhou)
(315) en adia ni qhi-da
INTJ monk 2SG go-CONSEQ
kek-li
be able-SEN.INF
‘Ah, monk, you will be able to go (to Lhasa).’ (ELDP, corpus WT09_4)
Complement wa-la, ‘(to be) possible’ (SM fă ⌅, ‘way, means’ + incompletive aspect marker -la, ’have means’) denotes the possibility of an event. It is always used as a chain-final modal verb in clause chains together with one of the four non-chain-final clause markers indicating logical or temporal relationship between the final and non-final clause (see Section 4.10.1). In (316) wa-la is used together with the consequential marker -da to express the
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expected consequences of the activity jja, ‘to visit’ (if you visit Tibet, there will be no problem):
(316) adia ni zang jja-la-gu-da
monk 2SG Tibet visit-INCOMPL-COMPL-CONSEQ
wa-la-li sho-ma
be possible-INCOMPL-SEN.INF QUOT-RES
‘Monk, for you it will be possible to go to Tibet, (the lama) said…’ (ELDP, corpus WT09_4)
The negative counterpart of wa-la is ma-la (EXIST.NEG mi + wa-la, ‘have no means’).
Like wa-la, it is always used as a chain-final verb together with one of the non-final clause markers. In (317) and (318), ma-la is used together with the coordinate marker -ma to indicate that the situation expressed by the non-final verb (huanlan, ‘to be noisy in 317 and tin, ‘to hurt’ in 318) is unbearable to the speaker:
(317) ngu-de she-li huanlan-ma
1SG-ATTR house-LOC (to be) noisy-COORD
ma-la-li
be impossible-INCOMPL-SEN.INF
nga be-xhui-ge-li
1SG.OBL NEG-sleep-CAUS-SEN.INF
‘It is too noisy in my home, I can’t sleep.’ (Cairangji)
(318) menzai yi-ge sho-de shaida
be impossible-INCOMPL-SEN.INF
‘As I was saying that, I was very tired and my feet were killing me.’ (Picnic) The complement ddo, ‘to want’ (AT ddo, ‘to think, to want’) is used both as an independent verb ‘to think’ (as in 319) and as a modal complement verb ‘to want’ (as in 320):
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(319) ngu ra menzai ddo-la-li
1SG also like that think-INCOMPL-SEN.INF
‘I agree with you.’ (Conversation 2_Thangkas, Smoking and Car)
(320) ngu sama qe-la be-ddo-la-li
1SG food eat-COND NEG-want-INCOMPL-SEN.INF
‘I don’t want to eat.’ (Xiawu Dongzhou)’
As illustrated in this section, all the modal complements express deontic modality. Epistemic modality in Wutun is indicated primarily by evidential markers (see Chapter 7) and clause-final modal particles (see Section 5.3.3). While modal complements form a coherent group on the basis of their semantic meaning, their position with regard to the verb varies. Some of the modal complements occur as suffixes directly attached to the verb like aspect complements (see Section 4.8.1), while some of the modal complements are used as final verbs in clause chains.
4.9 Auxiliaries
Auxiliaries are a partly grammaticalized subclass of verbs that are used as modifiers of the main verb to form a verb phrase. Auxiliaries function as independent constituents in the clause and can carry some inflectional information (such as evidential marking) typically expressed by the verbs. However, unlike regular verbs, auxiliaries cannot have arguments of their own, but they always share their arguments with the main verb, and they do not take all the verbal markers that can be attached to the regular verbs. In a verb-auxiliary construction, complement verbs and aspect markers are attached to the main verb, while auxiliaries take evidential, interrogative and imperative markers. The main verb in the verb-auxiliary construction often requires nominalization with the nominalizer -de.
The order of elements in a verb-auxiliary construction is summarized by Figure 3:
129 Figure 3. Auxiliary verb construction
(Neg) V (Comp) (Asp) (Nmlz) Aux (Evid) {Interr}
{Imp}
Where Neg= negative prefix, V= main verb, Comp= complement verb, Asp= aspect marker, Nmlz= nominalizer, Aux= auxiliary, Evid= evidential marker,Interr= interrogative marker, Imp= imperative marker
Example (321) illustrates a verb-auxiliary construction:
(321) gu nga-ha yenyek
3SG 1SG.OBL-OD English jho-di-de re
teach-PROGR-NMLZ FACT
‘S/he is teaching me English (as is generally known).’ (Xiawu Dongzhou)
In (321) the verb jho, ‘to teach’ is the main verb and the verb re is the auxiliary. The main verb takes the progressive aspect marker -di and the nominalizer -de connects the auxiliary re to the main verb. The auxiliary re has an evidential meaning, and it marks the event as a generally known fact
The semantic profile of auxiliaries is very diverse and they express various aspectual, modal and evidential meanings. Copula verbs in Wutun share most of their distributional and morphological properties with auxiliaries, and in addition to connecting nominal arguments, they can have an additional aspectual, modal or evidential meaning, so they are treated here as a subclass of auxiliaries. Aspectual, modal and evidential auxiliaries are discussed in Section 4.9.1 and copula verbs in Section 4.9.2.