Abstract U̠t-Ma’in (Kainji, Benue-Congo), spoken in northwestern Nigeria, has two morphosyntactically distinct progressive constructions – the Intransitive Progressive Construction and the Transitive Progressive Construction. This paper presents the synchronic structure of each construction, proposed historical sources of the distinct morphological pieces, and a comparison of the U̠t-Ma’in Progressive Constructions with cognate elements from four Kainji language clusters. No single source component has grammaticalized to mark progressive aspect in U̠t-Ma’in. Rather, the combination of several elements created the progressive. Formal changes in several morphosyntactic elements within each of the constructions provide evidence that originally nominalized verb forms are gradually becoming less noun-like and more verb-like. These developments are examples of constructionalization, as the Progressive Constructions exist as new form-meaning pairs distinct from the source. These formal changes also show signs of adjustment, whereby a construction moves toward isomorphism, that is, a one-to-one correspondence between form and meaning. Specifically, various stages of morphological loss are evident in particular lexemes when used in U̠t-Ma’in Progressive Constructions, gradually spreading throughout the lexicon.

中文翻译：

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论马其顿两个渐进式建筑的发展

摘要在尼日利亚西北部使用的U̠t-Ma'in（贝努-刚果的Kainji）有两个句法上截然不同的渐进式构造-不及物式渐进式构造和及物式渐进式构造。本文介绍了每种结构的共时结构，提出了不同形态片断的历史来源，并比较了U̠t-Ma'in渐进结构与来自四个Kainji语言群的关联元素。没有一个单一的来源成分被语法化以标记马特的进步方面。而是，若干要素的组合创造了进步。每个结构中几个形态句法元素的形式变化提供了证据，证明最初标称的动词形式正逐渐变得不像名词，而越来越像动词。这些发展是建构化的例子，因为渐进式建构以不同于来源的新形式-意义对的形式存在。这些形式上的变化也显示出调整的迹象，从而使构造趋向同构，即形式和意义之间一一对应。具体而言，当用于U-t-Ma'in Progressive Constructions中的特定词素时，形态损失的各个阶段是显而易见的，并逐渐散布于整个词典中。