Tags · Structure Auxiliary verb A verb carrying tense, aspect or modality for a main verb. Topics with this tag Pathway How does “see” come to mean “try”? Verbs of seeing repeatedly become markers of attempting. Japanese 食べてみる “eat and see”, Korean 먹어 보다, Mandarin 試試看, and the Turkic converb + kör- constructions all say “do it and see” for “try doing it”; Voinov (2013) traces the co-lexification across Eurasia, New Guinea, India, and West Africa. PerceptionModalityColexificationMultiverb construction +6 From seeing to trying → More in this facet Word order 2Adposition 1Syncretism 3Colexification 3Expletive subject 1Suppletion 2Negative concord 2Oblique marking 2Topic marking 1Multiverb construction 1
