The functional diversity of the progressive auxiliary ‘žat’ in Kazakh

Abstract The Kazakh auxiliary verb ‘ žat ’ has been primarily associated with expressing the progressive aspect. However, its additional functions have either been briefly acknowledged or overlooked. In this study, I demonstrate that beyond the progressive aspect, ‘ žat ’ conveys two types of pluractionality (namely, the iterative and a specific pluractional form associated with motion verbs), the perfect aspect, governed by event boundedness, and notably, both low and high hypotheticality (i.e., epistemic modality) in specific constructions. These functions are contingent upon the lexical verb, converb selection, form of the auxiliary, and type of clause. The analyses draw upon corpus data and recent fieldwork aimed at exploring previously undocumented constructions, thereby contributing to an expanding body of research on the versatility of tense, aspect, and modality (TAM) expressions.