A first investigation into the encoding of habitual aspect in Muklom with reference to other Sal languages

Abstract

This paper constitutes a first investigation into the strategies for encoding habitual aspect in Muklom, a Sal language of Northeast India, and contains a short survey into the grammatical encoding of habitual aspect in a sample of Sal languages, a subbranch of the Tibeto-Burman family. While some languages in the sample show cognate markers, others show non-cognate forms. The habituals can be linked etymologically to other grammatical categories such as facultative or deontic modality, locative, progressive, continuative, but also to a verb meaning ‘to eat soft foods’. Due to their potential diachronic instability, dedicated habitual markers are of limited use to the internal classification of Sal languages.