Composite Verbs in Altaic Languages
50th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, Kazan 2007
In the 1960 years of the 20th century the majority of linguists believed that Altaic languages had the category of aspect (perfect and imperfect). The theses defended, books and articles published asserted the existence of the category in Altaic languages. In Alma-Atyi there was even held a conference (1958) on the problem. The resolution of the conference underlined the necessity of studying this category in Turkic languages.
Today it is generally accepted that there is no category of perfect and imperfect aspects in Altaic languages. The linguists who attributed the category of aspect to Altaic languages considered the combination of adverbial participle forms and auxiliary (modifying) verbs as the main means of expressing the category of aspect. In reality these combinations are nothing more than one of the types of compound verbs, i.e. composite verbs.
Some languages have no composite verbs (e.g., German), in some others they are numerous (e.g., Japanese, Hindi). Altaic languages, including Turkic languages as well, are among the languages of the latter type.
The linguists studying Indian languages like A. P. Barannikov writes that the meaning of such compound (composite — F. G.) verbs is made of the meaning of the first verb <…> modified in a certain way and specified by the meaning of the second “forming” verb (Barannikov, A. P.: Khindustani (grammatika). L., 1934. s. 106.).
The expert of Japanese, A. A. Peshkovskiy notes that “composition of stems is also used widely in Japanese in verb forming, for example, the verb kaku ‘to write’ has numerous derivatives: kakidasu ‘to start to write’, kakinuku ‘to write out’, etc.” (Japonskiy lingvisticheskiy sbornik. M., 1959. s. 36). A similar phenomenon is observed in Altaic languages: ouqiyp chigarga ‘to read through’, qaushap teusherge ‘to be taken aback’ (in Tatar); yaziyp quyiwou ‘to write down’, yaziyp be- teu ‘to finish to write’, kileshep torou ‘to suit’ (in Bashkir); $a$inp qalmaq ‘to be taken aback’, uzamp gitmek ‘to stretch’ (in Turkish); vuolasa tuh ‘to read through’, girsou khur ‘to write down’, savatsa kaj ‘to take away’, savatsa shukh ‘to take out’ (in Chuvash); avch parkh ‘to take out – to take and go out)’, chirzh parkh ‘to drag out’, naadat parkh ‘to start to play’ (in Kalmyk); betezhe avakha ‘ to write down’, niidezhe garaa ‘ to fly over/past’ (in Mongolian); aliyp kelerge ‘to bring, to take and bring’ (in Altaic), etc.
All of these examples present composite verbs characterized by: 1) single meaning; 2) their use as a single member of the sentence; 3) the fact that their components cannot be separated by an independent word; 4) single stress.
By their status composite verbs are undoubtedly lexical units, i.e. independent verbs in Altaic languages. They make up a rich variety of the verbal system of these languages. There is no doubt that composite verbs should be included in dictionaries as separate independent words and studied within the word-forming system of Altaic languages. There is no practice of including these verbs in Altaic dictionaries yet, except in Tatar.