The semantics of pluperfect forms in Classical Armenian Gospels

The paper focuses on the semantic properties of Classical Armenian periphrastic verbal forms consisting of a participle in -eal and an auxiliary verb em ‘to be’ in past tense; the  data are  from Armenian translation of  four Gospels. The  pluperfect in Classical Armenian may function as past perfect representing resultative, stative, and experiential uses. Likewise, irreal (both hypothetical and counterfactual) and antiresultative meanings (non-achieved or  cancelled result) are  well attested. Finally, standard relative-tense uses are also frequent. The most important discourse function of pluperfect forms is related to marking «out-of-sequence» events. Cross-linguistically, this inventory of functions is more or less standard, but some details require further analysis.