The working title of my doctoral thesis is “Perspective constructions formed by Mari retrospectivizing particles”.

My thesis investigates the usage and development of so-called retrospective shift markers, a typologically understudied group of temporal items that are found in Mari languages. My aim is to examine the temporal profile of the retrospection-based structures as well as their ability to express non-temporal meanings. Regarding data and methods, my work is mainly a synchronic corpus study.

A key concept in my research is “perspective”, which I study as a temporal, aspectual, modal and epistemic phenomenon. Hence, one of my main goals is to specify the relationships between different TAME-categories both functionally and in terms of grammatical change.