ИСТИНА

In a seminal article on the typology of verbal inflection, Haspelmath (1998) points out that many anomalous features in the shape and behaviour of imperfective verb forms cross-linguistically can be explained as a side effect of grammaticalization. Once an innovative present tense grammaticalizes into the TAM system of a given language, the pre-existing formation whose central function it takes over – labelled an ‘old present’ – may become restricted to more peripheral roles (whether in terms of semantics or of lexical distribution) that have only their diachronic heritage in common. This observation predicts that at a particular moment in a language’s history, traces of numerous diachronic layers of present formation may be preserved side by side in its synchronic morphology and morphosyntax. The formal complexity of such a system thus provides clues to its development. In this paper we present a verb system of just this kind in Andi, an understudied minority language of the East Caucasian family, and show that the unusual functional distribution of its morphological material makes sense as the result of a particularly multi-layered history, in which each successive imperfective formation has encroached upon the domain of the one preceding it.