Functional universals of tense-aspect-modality morphology in SOV languages

This study investigates the tense-aspect-modality (TAM) morphology of four SOV languages with special attention given to the identification of iconic properties. The languages described for this study are Comanche, Japanese, Tamil and Turkish. The specific characteristics analyzed are length of the TAM forms, proximity of the forms to the stem and possible combinations of TAM categories. The study reveals that more complex notions are expressed by longer forms and more simple notions by shorter forms. Likewise, forms that are more relevant to the verb are shown to occur closer to the verb stem. The degree of isomorphism does not appear to correlate to the degree of combinability of TAM forms, although the notion of isomorphism is supported by the results, These results generally support the notion of iconic representation in TAM.