The perfect construction and complexity drift in Sri Lankan Malay

The verb morphosyntax of Sri Lankan Malay (SLM) differs strikingly from that found in other Malay varieties in that it has developed bound functional morphology as well as contrasts that are not present in related Indonesian varieties. Various types of functional prefixes and suffixes are now associated with the SLM verb which were not previously associated with Malay verbs, including tense and (non-)finiteness markers. The periphrastic perfect construction (1) is discussed and analyzed as biclausal, based on evidence from negation. The auxiliary aɖa can be negated, interrupting the adjacency of the verb and the auxiliary. Negation ordinarily precedes the lexical verb in the SLM verbal complex. The fact that a morphologically finite negation element is prefixed to the auxiliary in (1) supports a biclausal analysis of this construction. The construction does not add a semantic contrast, but compensates for the reanalysis of the free-standing perfect marker su as a bound tense affix. Some younger speakers are not using past or completive prefixation, and are reinterpreting aɖa (as -ɖa) as a suffix on the main verb, demonstrating that morphological simplicity or complexity in radical contact languages does not increase monodirectionally.