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Articles

The Effects of HabitualGrammatical Past
A Contrastive Study

Masahiko Nose

Shiga University / Professor

Introduction

This is a contrastive study of habitual sentences. A sentence in the habitual can beinterpreted to refer to a usual past custom or apresent custom. The habitual is expressed in
English with the idiomatic expression “used todo,” as in “I used to drink coffee.” Some languages, such as Amele (Trans-New Guinea),
have a grammatical habitual that functions asshown in (1). In Amele, the habitual element “l”
is inserted between parts of the verb inflections. Roberts (1987) presented Amele’s
descriptive grammar, classifying the habitualelement “l” as a habitual tense marker.
(1) Amele:Ija		
ho-l-ig.
I		come-habitual past-1sg“I used to come.”
This study examines the effects of the grammatical habitual by contrasting several
languages. Four sample languages were chosen
for this study: two with a lexical habitual andtwo with a grammatical habitual: English andHungarian on the one hand and Amele and
Ma Manda on the other. Ma Manda and Amele
are both spoken in Papua New Guinea and belong to the Trans-New Guinea family. This
study also clarifies the functions of the grammatical habitual in Trans-New Guinea
languages (Foley 2000). English is selected as a
typical standard language for linguistic comparison and has many types of available
sentences. Hungarian is a Finno-Ugric lang uage and is differentiated from typical
European languages. It has productive lexical
habitual forms. There have been several previ-

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ous studies on the habitual, including Bybee etal. (1994), Tagliamonte and Lawrence (2000),
Carlson (2012), and Cristofaro (2004). Habitual forms are related to tense and aspect andare realized grammatically and lexically. In addition, some languages lack a habitual form;
instead, they use temporal adverbs, such as “always” and “usually.” This study considers thebasic function(s) of the habitual by contrasting
the sample languages.
The remainder of this paper is structured asfollows. Section 2 presents previous studies on
habitual past and language descriptions in Papua New Guinea as well as setting out the aimsof this contrastive study. Section 3 presents thedata on the habitual past tense or related phenomena in the sample languages. Section 4
provides the habitual features, and section 5
concludes the study.

This section describes the research objectivesof this study and considers previous studies on
the topic. Then, it introduces the contrastive
method of habitual (grammatical and lexical)
and identifies the significant points of thestudy. Overall, this study considers the characteristics of habitual forms in the Trans-New
Guinea languages Amele and Ma Manda andprovides a basic introduction.
This study provides a contrastive study of habitual forms in a limited number of languages.
This sample is not sufficiently large to consider
undertaking a typological investigation, but it
is sufficient for this study to be able to contrast
lexical and grammatical habitual and clarify habitual functions. Furthermore, Amele and Ma

Manda are Trans-New Guinea languages, andboth have habitual grammatical forms; thisstudy investigates their habitual forms moredeeply.
The habitual aspect usually refers to habitual
actions in the past or present. It generally has
both tense and aspectual aspects. The habitual
aspect has long been an object of studies since
the work of Comrie (1976, 1985). Later, Bybee
et al. (1994), Carlson (2012), Smith (2013), andothers studied the habitual aspect and related
phenomena. The semantic aspects and typological significance of habitual constructions
have previously been discussed. However, little
data has been acquired on habitual sentences in
New Guinea languages, and there seems to be
insufficient consideration of habitual lexical
sentences. Habitual sentences are also related
to repeated or continuous actions (keep-ing),and Mattiola (2019) studied these.
This study uses four sample languages: English, Hungarian, Amele, and Ma Manda. The
examples of English sentences were drawn
from descriptive grammar and grammar textbooks, such as Tagliamonte and Lawrence(2000). For Hungarian, we referred to Rounds(2009). For Amele, we consulted the author’s
field notes and Roberts (1987, 1990); for Ma
Manda, we consulted Pennington (2016).
The forms of each language’s habitual phases(grammatical and lexical) are summarized andcharacterized. A discussion is conducted on thefunction of grammatical and lexical habitualexpressions.
This section provides a brief introduction to
the New Guinea languages. In this study, two
New Guinea languages are employed as sample
languages. The Melanesian region, including
Papua New Guinea and West Papua, is among

The Effects of Habitual Grammatical Past

Masahiko Nose

II

Typology of habitualforms and functions

035

the most linguistically diverse regions in theworld. The Trans-New Guinea family is a groupof 500 languages in Melanesia (cf. Foley 2000,
Nose 2021), including Amele and Ma Manda.
These languages have a SOV word order andare rich in verbal morphology. They are alsorich in tenses, as Foley (2000) and Nose (2020)
point out. They tend to have a past tense forthe current day, another for yesterday, and another tense of the remote past. For the study ofhabitual phases and related topics, other recent
studies of Trans-New Guinea languages include
those of Elliott (2000) and von Prince et al.
(2019).
Amele is spoken in Madang Province, Papua
New Guinea and has around 5,000–6,000.
Roberts (1987) described the grammar of
Amele, followed by Nose (2021, 2022). Ma
Manda is spoken in Morobe Province, and it
has approximately 65,000 speakers (Pennington 2016: 3). Pennington (2016) provided a
description of the grammar of Ma Manda.
2.1. Contrastive study
This study uses contrastive linguistic methods and functional typolog y. This study
clarifies the cross-linguistic uses of habitual
past forms. In particular, it contrasts languages
with a grammatical habitual form and those
without it. Two example uses of the habitualare given below.

(2) Grammatical habitual: Amele	Ija (I) ho-l-ig (come-habitual past-1sg ).
“I used to come.”(3) Lexical habitual: English
I used to dance here.
I would smoke at home.

036

We identify two types of habitual: the habitual with a grammatical form and the lexical
habitual, with examples shown in (2) and (3).
The habitual grammatical exists as a grammatical morpheme, with the form of the habitualphase embedded within the verb morphology.
This form can then be used to express the habitual. Lexical habitual aspects retain theirlexical form. Thus, the habitual function is realize d in g rammar (Amele) and lexic on(English).
The forms used in habitual lexical phases do
not feature grammatical morphemes but retain
their lexical forms. In addition, these forms
may express meanings other than the habitual.
That is, a habitual grammatical phrase has afully grammaticalized form and belongs to thetense or aspectual category, while lexical habitual phrases have only poorly grammaticalized
forms or forms that depend heavily on vocabulary and do not belong to the tense or aspect
categories.
Finally, this study clarifies certain grammatical features of Trans-New Guinea languages.
The Trans-New Guinea languages spoken in
the Melanesian area form a large group of morethan 500 languages that differ in their grammar
and vocabulary. The common grammaticalstructures of the Trans-New Guinea languages
remain to be clarified. If a language retains aunique grammatical form, it has a reason or a
motivation for this. This study also compares
languages that are different from European languages and provide peculiar behaviors of theirhabitual aspect.

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III

Contrastive dataon the habitual

past, sometime before the time of the utterances. The tense differences between present andhabitual tenses are shown below.

Here, we provide example habitual sentencesof our sample languages.

(5) Several present and past tenses in Amele(Roberts 1987: 223–225):
	Present: Ija hu-gina. “I come.” (present
tense)
	Today’s past:Ija hu-g-a. “I came
(today).”	Yesterday’s past:Ija hu-g-an. “I came(yesterday).”	Remote past:Ija ho-om. “I came
(before yesterday).”	Habitual past:Ija ho-l-ig. “I used tocome.”
	Negative past:
Ija qee (not) ho-lom.
“I did not come.”

3.1. Amele
Amele is spoken in Madang Province, Papua
New Guinea. Its word order is SOV, and it has
a complicated verb morphology, as shown in(4).

(4) Ija mala baga-dugan.
	I chicken kill-1SG. yesterday’s past tense“I killed a chicken yesterday.”In this transitive sentence, the direct object“mala” (chicken) does not feature an accusative
case marking. The verb phrase “baga-dugan”
includes the verb “kill” and the first person singular subject marking, together with the first
person singular yesterday’s past. Amele features
the tense forms present, today’s past, yesterday’s
past, remote past, negative past, negative future, future, and habitual past tense. Roberts(1987: 228) indicated that the habitual pasttense describes an event that recurred in the

Amele has a rich tense system, with five pasttenses (today’s past, yesterday’s past, remote
past, habitual past, and negative past), as wellas and two future tenses and a present tense(Roberts 1987). The habitual past is used to express past habits or continuous or recurring
events in the past. In Amele, habitual tense

Table 1. Hona come conjugation in the habitual past tense
Present tense

Habitual tense(Roberts 1987)

Habitual tense(my data 2014)

1SG

hu-gi-naho-l-om

ho-lig2SG

ho-go-naho-l-om

ho-log

3SG

ho-na

ho-l

ho-loi/ holi on

1Dual

ho-wo-naho-lo-hho-lob

2&3 Dual

ho-si-naho-lo-sinho-loig

1PL

ho-go-naho-lo-mho-lob

2&3 PL

ho-gi-naho-lo-inho-loig

The Effects of Habitual Grammatical Past

Masahiko Nose037

forms (like other past tense forms) inflect withpersons and numbers.
Table 1 presents the habitual tense morphology in Amele. There are dialectal differences(Roberts and my data; Nose 2022: 29–30). The
element -l- is found in the habitual verb morphology. This study considers that the habitualelement -l- implies the adverb “sain li” (usually)that was grammaticalized into a verbal element.
The habitual element -l- is inserted between
the verb stem and the person/number agreement. Roberts (1987) categorized the habitualas a tense category. However, my data, as shownin Table 1, indicate that the habitual element isincorporated into te person/number agreement and makes a kind of portmanteau form.
Semantically, the habitual form (“obiginaon”) describes both present action (such as in
the lexemes used to/would in English), as
shown in (6a–c).1)(6) Habitual forms in my data:a. Ija cabi-na obigina on.
		“I used to go to the garden.” (habitualpast)	b.	Ija cabi-na obigina on ba bila himec
oborin.
		“I used to go to the garden, but notnow.”	c.	Ija cabi-na obigina on bila ha cabi-na
obiga.
		“I used to go to the garden, and I do
so now as well.”
The habitual form (“obigina on”) can imply
both meanings of present action and past (cf.
used to/would distinction in English). In (6b),the past habit is characterized as not continuing in the present, and in (6c), it continues in

the present day. Amele speakers report that the
habitual past tense can also be used to refer tothe present, as in (7). Thus, the habitual formin Amele cannot be regarded as a pure tense
category.
(7) Ija rais
ji-gina on.
I riceeat-habitual.1sg“I used to eat rice/ I always eat rice.”
3.2. Ma Manda
The second example is that of Ma Manda
language, spoken in Morobe Province, Papua
New Guinea. Ma Manda and Amele belong to
the same Trans-New Guinea language family
but do not have a direct relationship, and theirgrammars and lexicons differ. Nevertheless, as
Foley (2000) noted, their grammars show
some similarities.
The grammar of Ma Manda was described by
Pennington (2016), and the examples shown
here are drawn from his study. Transitive andintransitive sentences in Ma Manda are shownin (8) and (9).

(8) filaang-ka ku-ya-k.
fly-SS
go-PRS-3SG
	“It is flying away.” Pennington (2016: 142),
SS: same subject suffix
sako-ka(9) [tamek ban] 		
kagang mo-go-k.
bed ahold.3SG-SS
villagego.down-RP-3SG
	“He grabbed a bed and went outside.”
Pennington (2016: 143)
Ma Manda has a rich tense system, with present, near past, remote past, and future tenses(cf. Nose 2020). As seen in (8) and (9), Ma

1) My data show that some habitual tense forms lack theelement “-l-” and that “-gina” or “-gina on” forms areused for the habitual past tense. My observation differsfrom the habitual forms observed by Roberts (1987).
These differences are likely dialectal differences or may
result in morphological changes in Amele.

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Manda is pro-drop (can omit the subject pronoun), and its basic word orders are SV and
SOV. The remote past has the verbal infix“-go-” and the near past has the verbal infix“-a-,” as shown in (10) and (11).
(10) Remote past: Pennington (2016: 368)
kepbûsenang at-ku-gû ba-go-t.
	yesterday jungle
be-go-DUR
come-RP-1SG	“Yesterday having gone around in thebush, I came (back).”(11) Near past: Pennington (2016: 369)
taamengsla [membû tem]laat-a-k.
morning head hair scrape-NP-3SG“(This) morning he shaved his head.”
Roberts (1987) did not find that Amele has
have a fully grammaticalized aspect; by contrast, according to Pennington, Ma Manda has
a rich system of aspect categories: progressive,
durative, prospective, perfect, terminative,completive, and habitual. In particular, the habitual aspect is expressed by a verbal suffix“-nang,” and this habitual suffix follows verb
inflections:[verb stem-tense-subject marking + habitual
aspect suffix] (Pennington 2016: 408). The habitual aspect indicates that the action is
performed regularly, customarily, or habituallyand the suffix “-nan” is derived from the locative case enclitic.
Example habitual sentences are given in (12)and (13); significantly, the habitual aspect cooccurs in the remote past, not in the near past.
(12) kodûp
betel.nut

na-waa-got-nang.
eat-PFV.HAB-RP-1SG-HAB

The Effects of Habitual Grammatical Past

	“I used to chew betel nut.” HAB: habitual
aspect(13) Fuku seka nawaagu-ngang.
take cook eat-remote past- 3pl-habitual	“Taking them, they used to cook and eat
them.”
Moreover, the habitual can co-occur withboth present and future tenses, indicating thatthe habitual meaning implies repeated actionin the present tense (and in the future tense).
nait-nang.
(14) kodûp
Betel nut eat-IPFV.HAB-1SG-HAB“I will be chewing betel nut.”
3.3. Hungarian
Hungarian is a Finno-Ugric language whosegrammar was characterized by Rounds (2009).
Its basic word orders are SV and SOV. Hungarian has rich case marking and a complex verb
morphology including verbal prefixes and person, tense, and number agreements. Its tense
system includes the present and the past, andthe verbal prefix realizes aspectual meanings.

a tollat(15) Be-teszi	Into(prefix)-put-3sg.present the pen atáská-ba.
the bag-into	“He puts the pen into the bag.” Rounds(2009)
In (15), a verbal prefix is shown that has an
aspect meaning and a complex verb agreement.
Hungarian has more than 10 cases, and in (15),“-ba” in “táskaá-ba” is a locative case, meaning“into.”

Masahiko Nose

039

The verb “szokik” (used to, get accustomedto) has the habitual meaning in Hungarian as
szokik + verb-infinitive. The verb “szokik” isderived from the noun “szokás” (custom, habits). Rounds (2009) reported that “szokik”
indicates the past and present habits and canbe used in the present tense. Examples of its use
are shown in (16) and (17).
(16) 6-kor
szok-tamat 6
habitual verb
fölkel-ni.
to get up (infinitive)“I generally get up at six o’clock. (got up)”szok-tunk(17) Hétvégen ki
at weekend out(prefix)
habitual verb
men-nia telekre.
to go (infinitive) the field-to	“We usually go to our field at the weekend. (went to)”(18) Reggel
kávézeni
morning to drink-coffee (infinitive)szok-tam, 		este
habitual verb
eveninginkábbteázom.
ratherdrink-tea
	“In the morning I usually drink coffee, inthe evening I drink tea.”
The “szokik” construction is not a fully grammaticalized form: this lexical verb is used toindicate the habitual meaning. This is an idiomatic usage.
3.4. English
Finally, English has two habitual lexical
forms: “used to” and “would” (Tagliamonteand Lawrence 2000). They refer to past cus-

040

toms and habits, and their use can be found in
the following (19a) and (19b).
(19) Habitual in English:a.	Used to + verb: partly grammaticalized idiom, still lexical, used incontrast to the present “now” (still
lexical “used to”)	Example: “I used to go out drinking every
night. (not now).”b. Auxiliary: would + verb
		Would: recalling the past (auxiliary
would)
	Example: My boyfriend and I would ridea bicycle together. (Implication: we ride abicycle, now too.)
Lexical “used to” is considered to be an idiomatic usage of the habitual, and it is not fully
grammaticalized. Some English linguists consider the “used to” form to be an auxiliary verb.
However, within the isolating nature of Engl ish g rammar, the use d to form is not
integrated into verb morphology. The auxiliary“would” usage is based on the irrealis meaningand evolved through a quite different route of
semantic change from that of the “used to” usage. Both idiomatic habitual forms are used in
English.
3.5. Overall summary
This study has classified habitual expressions
into two categories: grammatical and lexical.
Grammatical forms of the habitual are foundin Amele and Ma Manda, both New Guinea
languages. In Amele, the habitual is found as apast of habit, and the grammatical form of thehabitual is incorporated into the verb morpholog y. Ma Manda , like Amele, has a

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Table 2. Summary of functions of grammatical habitual and lexical habitualType of habitual

Incorporated into
verb morphology

Implication for thepresent “now”

Functional remarks

Amele

grammatical tense,
verb infix

Yes, verb-habitualtense-person-number

No

Habitual tense derives
from “usually”

Ma Manda

grammatical aspect,
verb infix

Yes, verb-tense-personnumber) + habitualYes
aspectHabitual aspect derives
from locative meaning

Hungarianlexical verb “szokik”

No (szokik + verb)

Yes (present tense ofcustom)custom (past andpresent)

English

1: lexical “used to”
2: Auxiliary “would”

No (used to + verb,
would + verb)

Yes (used to)past habit and recalling, irrealis meaning

grammatical habitual, but it is an aspect of thehabitual phase; in Ma Manda, the habitual isadded as a suffix at the end of the verb structure and can co-occur with the present andfuture tenses. Hungarian and English both feature lexical habituals. In Hungarian habitual,
the expression of a habit is an idiomatic expression using the habitual verb “szokik” + anotherverb (infinitive); “szokik” is given in the present tense and has a present meaning. In
English, “used to” and the auxiliary verb
“would” indicate past habits. These are idiomatic expressions that are not fully
grammaticalized.
These results are summarized in Table 2 below.

IV

Discussion

This section discusses differences between
the grammatical and lexical usage of habitualexpressions for the four sample languages studied here. Two points must be discussed.
The first is to clarify the functional differences between grammatical and lexical expressionsof the habitual. Such expressions vary across

The Effects of Habitual Grammatical Past

languages, from grammatical forms to lexical
expressions and even to the exclusive use of
temporal adverbs. The relationship between
the meanings and forms of these different expressions were examined and contrasted. A
contrastive study was taken to allow the question why one lang uag e has a particular
grammatical feature and another does not to beraised. Drawing contrasts among multiple languages makes it possible to identify differencesamong grammar and functions and to notice
new points.
We believe that grammatical forms are grammaticalized as their meanings and functions
are necessary, meaningful, and frequent (cf. Aikhenvald 2015, Bybee et al. 1994). In otherwords, languages that feature habitual grammatical forms are grammaticalized because
habit is considered essential by its speakers (Bybee et al. 1994, Elliott 2000).
Second, I discuss the functional effects of habitual grammatical forms (tense forms in
Amele and aspectual forms in Ma Manda) observed in the Trans-New Guinea languages
Amele and Ma Manda in particular. In these

Masahiko Nose041

languages, grammatical forms indicating thehabitual are incorporated into verb morphology. In this regard, we discuss the functionalburden and its effects.
Grammatical expressions of the habitual areobserved in the New Guinea languages Amele
and Ma Manda, which, although members of
the same language family, have quite different
grammars and lexicons. As in Amele (20), habitual expressions are incorporated into theverbal inflection to form a past tense of habit.
In Amele, the habitual expression is part of theverbal inflection, as in (20), forming the habitual past tense. In Ma Manda, on the other
hand, the habitual suffix “-nang” is added at
the end of the verbal inflection, as in example(21), and this habitual suffix is interpreted as
expressing a habitual aspect.
(20) Amele: Habitual past tense	Ija (I) rais ji-gina-on (eat-habitual past1sg).
“I used to eat rice.”(21) Ma Manda: Habitual aspect	kodup (betel nut) na-waagot-nang (eatperfective/1sg-habitual).
“I used to chew betel nut.”
The effect of having such a grammatical form
for the habitual is that the meaning of the habit
is grammaticalized, making it easy to use. However, this also complicates the grammar andplaces a functional burden on verb morphology.
The resulting complexity of tense and aspect
categories may burden grammar acquisition.
Grammatical forms for the habitual are also
observed in Trans-New Guinea languages oth-2) Foley (1991: 246) described the grammar the Trans-

New Guinea language, Yimas, where the habitual is incorporated into the verbal morphology using the suffix“-kia.” In other words, Yimas shares with Amele and Ma
Manda the grammatical form of the habitual, which isincorporated into the verbal inflection as a suffix. Therefore, it is highly likely that the use of the habit suffix is a042

er than Amele and Ma Manda—the reasons forthis need to be considered.2)
According to Chafe (1973) and Dahl (1983),
the relationship between deep and shallow
memory parallels the relationship between distant and near past. For example, Amele and
Ma Manda have remoteness distinctions of thepast tenses and their past tenses can be interp r e t e d b y u s i n g C h a f e a n d D a h l ’s
considerations. Drawing on this conclusion, we
propose that the habitual past (tense and aspect) is a grammaticalized version of thememory of repeated actions. In other words,
the habitual past may be incorporated as tense
and aspect into the distant past and the nearpast.
Habitual lexical expressions are also examined in the present study, with examples fromEnglish and Hungarian. The following examples (22) and (23) indicate the contrast whereby
English uses partially grammaticalized habitualexpressions, while Hungarian uses strictly lexical verbs. These habitual lexical phases, unlike
grammatical forms, are easy to learn, and because they are not grammatical, they are notburdened by verb morphology or function. On
the other hand, due to their lack of a fixed
grammatical function, their meaning is ambiguous and is realized in a roundabout way.
Japanese, Chinese, German, and other languages also use a habitual lexical expression or use
temporal adverbs to express a habitual meaning.
(22) English: Partly grammaticalized idiom
a. I used to dance here.
b. I would drink beer.
(23) Hungarian: Lexical verb “szokik”

grammatical tendency of the Trans-New Guinea languages.

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	En angolul szok-t-am (used to-past-1sg)
tanulni. “I used to study English.”This idiomatic form of habit has the effect of
requiring no grammatical complexity and does
not impose a significant burden on verb morpholog y. However, it may be that if theseidiomatic forms come into frequent use, theywould be grammaticalized in their habitualtense or aspectual form.

V

Conclusion

This study conducted a contrastive linguistic
investigation using a sample of two languages
with grammatical habitual forms and two languages with lexical forms. The Trans-New
Guinea languages Amele and Ma Manda wereselected as featuring grammatical forms of thehabitual.
The investigation identified that habitual actions can be realized lexically or grammatically,
and the choice is functionally motivated ineach language. Trans-New Guinea languages,
such as Amele and Ma Manda, prefer habitualgrammatical actions, which have the effect of
explicitly recalling an action repeated in thepast. Trans-New Guinea languages are primarily “colloquial” and require special grammatical
habituality due to the frequent references topast events in everyday speech. The use ofgrammar to recall past habits may reflect theworldview of a language regarding its past tense
and aspect. On the other hand, Amele and Ma
Manda feature a morphological trade-off. By
contrast, English and Hungarian have a lexicalusage to express the habitual. The two languages do not show a strong need for habitualgrammar and thus do not need to grammaticalize habitual expressions.
Bybee et al. (1994) treated tense-aspect categories in terms of grammaticalization, and it isbelieved that the more grammatically habituala language is, the more it can be incorporated
into tense-aspect categories (see Elliott 2000).
He concludes that Amele’s habitual past tenseand Ma Manda’s habitual aspect form are bothused in these spoken-dominant languages, andtheir speakers frequently refer to past eventsand have special grammatical means of recalling past habitual situations.
Acknowledgment
I would like to thank Neret Tamo, Yoan Joseph Jay, and Yanyun Chen for their data andkindness. Moreover, I would like to thank Enago (www.enago.jp) for the English language
review. This work was supported by JSPS KAK ENHI Grant Numbers 15K02478 and
20K00541. An earlier version of this paper waspresented at the 9th International Contrastive
Linguistics Conference, (online, May. 20,2021). I am grateful to the audience for theircomments.
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THE HIKONE RONSO

Autumn / Oct. 2023 / No.437

The Effects of Habitual Grammatical Past
A Contrastive Study

Masahiko Nose

(2) Lexical habitual:a. English: I used to dance here.
b. Hungarian: En angolul szok-t-am (used topast-1sg) tanulni. “I used to study English.”

The habitual past tense describes an eventthat has occurred continuously in past time,
and this study discusses how grammar recognizes the habitual event. In (2a-b), English andHungarian use lexical verbs (used to/szokni) as
habitual. By contrasting the sample languages,
this study analyzes the semantic mechanism of
the habitual past actions (cf. Carlson 2012).
The habitual meaning can be lexical in Hungarian or less grammaticalized in English, andtheir habitual meaning is still included in verb
forms of both languages. Therefore, the lexical
habitual. In contrast, Amele and Ma Manda
have more grammaticalized forms (infix or suffix), and their habitual forms are independentof their verb meanings. Bybee et al. (1994) deal
with tense/aspect categories in terms of grammaticalization, and it is considered that thelanguages with grammatical habitual are moreincorporated into tense/aspect categories (cf.
Elliott 2000). Thus, the effect of habitualgrammatical means that habitual action can beinterpreted in the past tense or aspectuality.
Finally, this study claims that habitual actions
can be realized lexically or grammatically, andeach language’s choice is functionally motivated. Notably, the Trans-New Guinea languages,
such as Amele and Ma Manda, prefer habitualgrammatical forms, and the languages have effects of taking in the repeated past actions intheir grammar at the cost of more complicatedverb morphology.

The Effects of Habitual Grammatical Past

Masahiko Nose

This study attempts to clarify the usages of
the habitual past forms cross-linguistically. Remarkably, this study contrasts the languages
with grammatical habitual and those without
it. The sample languages are genealogically andtypologically different, including two TransNew Guinea languages, Amele and Ma Manda,
spoken in Papua New Guinea. Amele and Ma
Manda have habitual grammatical past, as in(1).
(1) Grammatical habitual:a. Amele: Ija (I) ho-l-ig (come-habitual past1sg). “I used to come.”b. Ma Manda: kodup (betel nut) na-waagotnang (eat-perfective/1sg-habitual). “I used tochew betel nut.” (Pennington, 2015: 408)
In (1a), Amele has the habitual element “l”
inside the verbal inflections, and the verbal
form indicates habitual past meaning. Ma
Manda has the habitual suffix “-nang” in theverb and the suffix indicates habitual aspect, asin (1b).
On the other hand, the habitual past can berealized lexically in other sample languages,
such as English and Hungarian, as in (2).

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