A contribution to the documentation of a nearly extinct language – Present Tense morphology in Modern Vilamovicean

Abstrakt

A contribution to the documentation of a nearly extinct language – Present Tense morphology in Modern Vilamovicean

The present paper documents one of the most relevant aspects of the grammar of Modern Vilamovicean, a Germanic language that is on the verge of extinction. Based upon extensive, original field research, the article provides an exhaustive description of the morphology of the Present Tense, presenting all its characteristics: personal endings regular endings, endings that are found in verbs that end in a dental consonant and endings that appear in praeterito-praesentia verbs, agglutination of personal pronouns suffixed and prefixed forms, modifications of the stem alternation er/yn, changes in the root vowel lengthening, diphthongization, various types of vowel mutation and ablaut and irregularity of the conjugational pattern of three auxiliary verbs zåjn, hon and wada/wan.