Auxiliary Verbs and Temporal Pronouns

Due to syntactic influence from the SVO Wahitian languages (Haqraam in particular), auxiliary verbs in all Baoran dialects shifted from a sentence-final to a post-subject position. They continue to denote extra verbal information such as tense (e.g. molo ‘will’), aspect (e.g. ruma ‘repeat’), and mood (e.g. dori ‘need’). While they often stand as independent finite verbs which accompany sentence-final infinitive lexical verbs (1), when the subject is a pronoun (2), most Kalavan Baorans will suffix the auxiliary verb onto the pronoun to form a temporal pronoun. In these constructions, infinitive lexical verbs are transformed back into finite verbs. 

1. Kawina muka ‘egwebi yabe. “The man started to clean the house.”

2. Kabamu ‘egwebi yabeka. “He started to clean the house.”

Table 3: Temporal first person pronouns of Kalavan Baoran