An Analysis of the Typological Characteristics of Aspect in the Piending Dialect of Naxi
This paper describes the aspect system of verbs in the Piending vernacular of Naxi (Dadong Township, Gucheng District, Lijiang), drawing on Comrie's and Dai Yaojing's definitions of aspect. The author proposes eight aspect categories — completive, experiential, progressive, durative, semelfactive, iterative, prospective/future, and perfective — each marked by a distinct morpheme or construction (e.g., se11/t63 for completive, i3/t3 for experiential, ne11 for progressive, te11 for durative, and bu?3/ho55ne11 for future). Aspect markers fall into preposed markers (le33, te11), which attach loosely to the verb and permit inserted adverbs or negators, and postposed sentence-final markers, many grammaticalized from directional verbs such as bu?3 from "go." The paper analyzes constraints on marker co-occurrence and traces several markers' grammaticalization back to lexical directional verbs, situating Naxi's system typologically alongside Qiang, Yi, and Tibetan.
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