The evolution of past-hab in Cuzco Quechua.

In Cuzco Quechua (CQ), a periphrastic construction optionally marked for the past tense is said to serve as past habitual. The study focuses on the evolution of this construction in CQ. Its development replicates the cline suggested by Bybee et al. in 1994 and supports their findings but not in full: Although the habitual marker in CQ is restricted temporally to the past, it bears no past tense marking. The article sketches the different stages and concludes that the construction in question had further grammaticalized to a past imperfective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]