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Syntactically, aspectual verbs are
added to the adverbial participle (AVP)This is a form of the verb
that is essentially its past stem minus person-number-gender (PNG) markers; it
expresses in ordinary syntax the notion that some verbal action preceded
another verbal action, that expressed by the next verb in the sentence. A
sentence may have only one finite verb; all other verb must be non-finite,
such as the adverbial participle (AVP), the infinitive, or some other. The
AVP is essentially the past-stem of the verb, and has various morphological
and syntactic functions. We will give examples of the AVP forms when we list
paradigms of verbs; the function of the AVP will be explained in the chapter
on syntax (§ xxx, Chapter VII.) of the
lexical (`main') verb. Aspectual verbs then are marked for tense and PNG,
since the AVP preceding them cannot be so marked. Morphologically they then
act identically to the lexical verb from which they are derived, i.e. take the
tense markers etc. of the class of lexical verb they are identical to.
Vasu Renganathan
Sat Nov 2 21:16:08 EST 1996