The ‘Still Not’ Present in Andi: identifying the grammaticalization source

Abstract

Andi (East Caucasian) features a verb form that marks an event that is (still) not happening, contrary to the speaker’s expectation (i.e. ‘Still Not’ Present). This form is unusual for several reasons. First, forms of this kind are not typical for the language family. Second, while it conveys negative semantics, the form does not contain negation marking, even though segmentally it is rather heavy in comparison to other synthetic tenses. Third, to our knowledge grammatical ‘still not’ expressions are typologically uncommon. The paper describes the semantics and morphosyntactic properties of the ‘Still Not’ Present and suggests a plausible grammaticalization source by comparing dialects and closely related languages. We also try to match the data to typological categories like phasal polarity.