Re: V2 (plus Géarthnuns serendipity)

>> So that Géarthnuns could be called SAOV, where A means "auxilliary"?
>
>Much as I'm tempted to call it an auxiliary and call it a day, when I began
>groping for terms to explain the shléts, I trudged through bazillions of
>dictionaries in various languages and the term "auxiliary" seemed
>inextricably tied to verb-ness (aren't they often called "helping *verbs*"
>in English?). The shléts is too weak to stand on its own, and doesn't derive
>from a verb which had a meaning at one point.
>
>Do you want to go?   Yes, I *do*.
>
>Öçek la ba kadiz höhüraf?
>you-nom present-shléts ba go want-interrogative.mood
>
>*Shau, sí la (not possible).
>Yes, I do.
>
>Shau, hereçkeveçö (üraf).
>Yes, thus [what you just said] (want). Yes, I do.
>
>The shléts can occasionaly hang out on its own in interrogative tags, but
>usage is extremely limited:
>
>Öçek la ba kadiz höhüraf?
>Do you want to go?
>
>Shau, kfö Émars la hö?
>Yes. And what about Mary (does she want to go?)?
>
>Actually, now that I think about it, this is more a case where "höhüraf" has
>been truncated to the essential interrogative prefix, "hö-".
>So I usually cop out and call it a "shléts" once it's been introduced.
I would be comfortable calling the "shléts" an "auxiliary" on the grounds
that it marks tense/aspect/agreement type things, but is an independent
element (rather than, say, an affix on the verb).  The notion of "auxiliary"
is not--or should not--be inextricably linked to verb-ness, IMO.  Although
auxiliaries in English developed from verbs historically, they are clearly
*not* verbs synchronically, but have their own distinctive morphological
and syntactic features.

You might want to have a look at the Australian language Warlpiri (a.k.a.
Walbiri), which is just like Géarthnuns in that tense/aspect/agr features
are indicated by a particle (called an "auxiliary") which follows the
first constituent of the clause--i.e., the V2 position.  This particle
cliticises onto--i.e., forms a phonological unit with--the immediately
preceding element, and hence cannot occur as an utterance on its own.
The only real difference between Warlpiri and Géarthnuns in
this respect is that in Warlpiri the order of the verb and its arguments
is quite free (although SOV predominates), whereas in Géarthnuns the
position of the verb is more strict.

Other languages with short, clitic-like, V2 auxiliaries include some of
the South Slavic languages of the Balkans, among them Serbo-Croatian.

Matt.