Discourse-Interactional Functions of Udmurt val and vylem

The paper discusses the discourse-interactional functions of the past tense forms of the ’be’-verb in Udmurt (val and vylem). We focus on the analytic past tenses, in which forms of the ’be’-verb are traditionally analysed as auxiliaries. Our main attempt is to characterise these discourse-interactional uses, and their relation to analytic past tense forms and functions. We claim that these discourse-interactional functions should rather be attributed to the past tense forms of the ’be