Emphatic Progressive Verbal Constructions in Hawrami

The present paper tries to introduce a special type of verbal constructions in "Hawrami". These constructions, called emphatic progressive verbs in this paper, are composed of two conjoined parts: the infinitive plus present continuous, past continuous, and simple past verbs; nothing but agreement clitics (either subject-referring clitics in ergative constructions or object-referring clitics in non-ergative constructions) can separate these two parts. The functions of these constructions are: forming progressive aspect (while used with present and past continuous verbs), and emphasizing the verb (while used with simple past verbs); the former function is more unmarked than the latter one. These two functions will be differentiated on the basis of Givon's (2001) view on the nature of informative and contrastive focuses. Since these constructions are highly influenced by the information status of their constituents, the derivational process of these constructions can be looked at from the perspective of the information structure theory.