Abstract
Kazakh auxiliary verbs represent a challenge for learners and instructors due to their inherent linguistic complexity. There is a particular group of such “challenging” auxiliary verbs that are used to reflect similar linguistic characteristics: otyr, tūr, zhatyr, and zhür. While these verbs are quite often, but not always, interchangeable, there are minor differences between them that depend on the general linguistic and specific semantic contexts in which they are used. The main purpose of this paper is to elucidate the linguistic complexity of one of these auxiliary verbs, the verb zhatyr. Of particular interest to this study are the morphological, syntactic, and semantic characteristics of this verb. While zhatyr can undergo a number of transformations and be used to express a variety of tense-related meanings, the main focus of this study is only on the Present Continuous Tense version of this auxiliary verb. In order to understand the linguistic characteristics of zhatyr, it is necessary to discuss the notion of ‘auxiliary verbs’ in general and the nature of auxiliary verbs in modern languages, including Turkic languages and, of course, Kazakh itself. Such an overview is expected to provide insight into the general and specific linguistic properties of the phenomenon in question. Zhatyr is often considered a universal auxiliary verb that is used in the most frequent number of cases. Despite its broad implication and variety of tenses it is applicable to, its utilization nevertheless relies on factors of speaker’s position and length of the action. The verb zhatyr, in comparison with other three auxiliary verbs, is of extreme interest due to the highest number of cases in which it is contextually suitable.