Hill Mari verbal constructions with ə̑l’ə̑ / ə̑lə̑n: discontinuous past and beyond

This paper deals with Hill Mari verbal constructions with ə̑l’ə̑/ə̑lə̑n, verbal clitics, which are etymologically ‘frozen’ past tense forms of the verb ‘to be’. The clitics are considered to be discontinuous past markers. Applied to full-fledged verbs, these markers follow polysemy patterns typical of the discontinuous past in other languages. Nevertheless, they also function within the scope of mirativity, and such polyfunctionality has not yet been mentioned or accounted for in typology. The possible reasons for such a semantic development of discontinuous past markers are discussed in the paper.