Variation in aspect and modality in some languages of Northeastern Borneo

In most of the languages of Northeastern Borneo the categories of aspect and modality are almost always expressed lexically and often are optional. This paper discusses the expression of perfective and imperfective aspect as well as mood and negation as conveyed through a wide range of mostly unbound morphemes in four North Sarawak languages. The languages consist of two Kenyah variants, Lebu’ Kulit, and Òma Lóngh as well as two langauges spoken by former hunter-gatherers, the Punan Tubu’and the Penan Benalui. The data used draws from bot narratives and elicited material. The lexemes used are in large part discourse context and verb semantics dependent, and differ in all the languages. The lexical meaning of the form used for the pefective is usually ‘finished’ and for the imperfective it is ‘in the middle’. The exception is in Punan Tubu’ and Penau Benalui where the infix <en> marks the undergoer voice and also bears the meaning of perfectivity. Quotative verbs are generally used to express evidentiality and no bound evidentials are found.