Auxiliary Verbs in Serbo-Croatian, French, Persian, Spanish and English: A Cognitive-Semantic Approach to the Auxiliary Verb Usage and Passive Voice

Abstract

Auxiliary verbs have an important influence in the way languages connect with the cognitive processes. In this study, we investigate the role of auxiliary verbs in the formation of the semantic picture we get from their usage. Furthermore, the semantic notion and its interaction with the cognitive processing are taken into account. For our goal to be more tangible and testable, we took Serbo-Croatian, Persian, Spanish, French and English for an in-depth analysis, wherefrom we proposed a classification scheme for all languages based on the behavior of their auxiliary verbs. Based on the proposed model, we investigate furthermore the passive voice in English and propose a strong explanation for the cognitive-semantic sense of the passive in English based on the cognitive duality principle. Importance of Croatian in the way that it forms an extreme pole in the proposed classification scheme is further discussed. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that Persian has a syntactic incorporation in its simple past and present perfect.