Iamitive, perfect, and ‘already’ markers in Northwest Caucasian

This paper provides a description of the four verbal suffixes in the Northwest Caucasian languages (- χ’a in Abaza, - χ’a in Abkhaz, - хе in Adyghe, and - č̣’e in Kabardian) that have functions of such categories as the perfect, iamitive, and ‘already’. The difference between these categories has been debated in the recent literature, and the Northwest Caucasian languages represent an ideal case for a detailed investigation of the fine-grained distinctions between markers that occupy different places in the perfect-iamitive-‘already’ semantic space while remaining within a group of languages with a similar typological profile. Furthermore, this study contributes to earlier discussions by focusing on a hitherto less explored affixal type of iamitive(-like) marker. Using diagnostics partly borrowed from previous studies, we analyze the aforementioned suffixes on the basis of elicited and corpus data. The results show that - χ’a in Abkhaz is closest to the perfect, - хе in Adyghe and - č̣’e in Kabardian are close to ‘already’, while -χ’a in Abaza fits quite well into the iamitive category. We also pay special attention to the interaction of these markers with available TAM forms. It turns out that in most languages these markers are restricted to past perfective forms of dynamic verbs.