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Typology of Finiteness
Irina Nikolaeva*
University of London
Abstract
The notion of finiteness inherited from the traditional grammar and based on morphological crite-
ria has been ill defined. While some typologists doubt the universality of the finite ⁄nonfinite dis-
tinction, others suggest that finiteness is a scalar meta-phenomenon or a functional tendency
defined by a cluster of correlating parameters. In this approach no decision is needed as to what
feature is crucial for finiteness because it has different morphosyntactic manifestations across lan-
guages. The nature of finiteness has to do with the semantics of subordination (the asymmetry
between dependent and independent clauses). But other research argues that the finite ⁄nonfinite
opposition is broader because it applies independent clauses, too. The paper further shows that
there are different domains of grammar where the notion of finiteness may play a role. The nature
of the relationship between them is to some extent arbitrary and depends on an individual lan-
guage. This implies that if the universal content of this category is to be maintained, it must be
decomposed. At this stage what we need is a typologically informed approach which can provide
a tool for cross-linguistic comparison and present the whole area of finiteness-related phenomena
in a structured and principled way. This is a necessary prerequisite for providing a descriptively
adequate framework for further theory construction.
1. Introduction
The notion of finiteness inherited from traditional grammar is surrounded by controversy.
On the one hand, linguistic frameworks differ greatly in what they consider crucial for the
definition of finiteness and there is no guarantee that the traditional notion will play a role
in a theory of language. On the other hand, finiteness has no obvious semantico–pragmatic
corollary and therefore cannot be easily equated across languages using the standard typo-
logical practice of identifying a semantico–pragmatic situation type and examining the mor-
phosyntactic strategies which encode it. In this situation, constructing a meaningful
typology of finiteness is virtually impossible. The goal of this study is to provide a brief
overview of linguistic phenomena that may require such a notion in the first place.
2. Finite and Non-Finite Forms
In most grammatical descriptions, finiteness is defined as the property of the verbal form
which has to do with (i) tense marking, (ii) subject agreement, and (iii) the ability of the
form to be used exclusively or predominantly in independent ⁄main contexts. Languages
that exhibit finiteness opposition in this sense are termed ‘deranking languages’ in Stassen
(1985:76–83), ‘extreme nominalizing (embedding) languages’ in Givo
´n (2001:26–9) or
‘complement deranking languages’ in Koptjevskaja-Tamm (1993:26–32). In practice,
however, the extreme deranking type in which all dependent events are explicitly marked
as such is very rare. In many languages some verbal forms are reserved for subordination,
but others occur both in main and subordinate clauses.
LNC3 253
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Non-finite forms comprise action nominals (including infinitives and gerunds), partici-
ples, and converbs. Participles are primarily used for modification (including modifying
relative clauses) and display adjectival properties. As Haspelmath (1994:167) notes, they
often arise due to the process of analogy: ‘participles are formed with productive adjecti-
val affixes that come to be used so regularly that the deverbal adjective can be called a
participle’. Converbs are defined by Nedjalkov and Nedjalkov (1987) and Nedjalkov
(1995) as non-finite forms used primarily in adverbial functions. They usually originate
either as adpositional ⁄case forms of verbal nouns that have become independent of their
original paradigm, or as (co-predicative) participles that lost their agreement properties
(Haspelmath 1995:17). Action nominals refer to events and⁄or facts and typically occur in
complement or adverbial clauses (Comrie 1976; Koptjevskaja-Tamm 1993); however,
they may show inflectional properties and ⁄or combinability with adpositions typical of
nouns. This reflects the fact that action nominals often originate as deverbal nouns and
only later acquire a clausal status. As suggested in Harris and Campbell (1995:310–12),
deverbal nouns have the potential for being reanalysed as having a complex structure
because of their inherent dual nature: as they are formed on verbal bases, they are open
to an interpretation as a verb to the extent that they may start defining a clausal domain.
For instance, infinitives often originate as deverbal nouns in the dative or allative (Haspel-
math 1989).
So non-finite forms are mixed categories in the sense that they display behaviours typi-
cal of at least two grammatical classes: the verb, on the one hand, and the noun, adjective
or adverb, on the other. This follows from their historical origin as deverbal nouns. The
question is then which verbal categories are absent in non-finite forms compared to the
finite ones. This question has received considerable attention in the typological literature
(Joseph 1983:7–30; Koptjevskaja-Tamm 1993; Cristofaro 2003, 2007; others).
As mentioned above, the standard candidates are tense and subject agreement. But
there are significant variations as to which of these categories is crucial for the finiteness
opposition. The relevant features do not always come together and the descriptive prac-
tice differs greatly from one author to another. For instance, according to Holes (1990)
in Gulf Arabic non-finites differ from finites in the absence of both tense and subject
marking. On the other hand, Cole (1982:33) and Sridhar (1990:243) suggest that agree-
ment alone defines finiteness in Imbabura Quechua and Kannada, respectively. Tense is
not taken to be an important property distinguishing finites from non-finites. However,
in Roberts’ (1987:275) description of Amele tense is crucial. Many non-Indo-European
languages exhibit both tense and agreement on verbal forms which occur exclusively in
embedded contexts. In Tundra Nenets, participles and action nominals inflect both for
(relative) tense and agreement (Salminen 1997). Another example is so-called ‘dependent
moods’ as represented in West Greenlandic (Fortescue 1984) or Abkhaz (Hewitt 1979),
where dependent-only forms are fully inflected. Further complications arise because
neither tense nor agreement is a universal category, so whichever is chosen will be absent
in a number of languages. If agreement is taken to be the relevant category, languages
like Japanese lack finiteness altogether. If tense is the decisive feature, the finite ⁄non-finite
opposition appears to be absent in languages like Lango, where verbs do not inflect for
tense (Noonan 1992).
Although traditional analyses concentrate on tense and subject agreement, another rele-
vant category may be mood (Holmberg et al. 1993; Vincent 1998; Anderson 2007).
Dependent clauses, which are usually considered to be ‘less finite’ than independent
clauses, tend to lack modal distinctions. Tundra Nenets, for instance, exhibits 16 inflec-
tionally expressed and paradigmatically opposed moods on independent verbs (imperative,
2 Irina Nikolaeva
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subjunctive, optative, hortative, jussive and the like), but has no mood on dependent ver-
bal forms (Salminen 1997). Furthermore, in languages with morphological evidentials
there often are considerable restrictions on their usage in dependent clauses. Northern
Khanty exhibits the contrast between direct and indirect evidential in the past and present
(Nikolaeva 1999). This contrast is signalled in main ⁄independent clauses but neutralized
in subordinate clauses, which in this language are headed by converbs and action nomi-
nals. Bisang (2007) argues that the markers of politeness also obey the main ⁄dependent
asymmetry and are therefore instances of finite marking. For example, the Japanese
addressee honorifics in -mas-u (present) and -masi-ta (past) occur in independent clauses,
but have a restrictive distribution in dependent contexts occurring only in some types of
complement clause. Similar facts are observed in Korean (Sohn 1994:355).
Another morphological criterion may be switch-reference marking on the dependent
verb, which indicates coreferentiality with a core argument of another clause or the lack of
thereof. Verbal forms analysed as fully finite do not normally host switch reference, but
medial verbs in clause-chaining structures do, as for instance in Amele (Roberts 1988).
(1) a. Ho busale-ce-b dana age qo-ig-a
pig run.out-DS(SEQ)-3SG man PL hit-3PL-REC.PST
The pig ran out and the men killed it (today).
b. Ija [dana age ija na ho qo-ig-a]
1SG man PL 1SG POSS pig hit-3PL-REC.PST
d-ugi-na
know-1SG-PRS
I know that the men killed my pig.
Unlike the subordinate clause in (1b), the medial clause in (1a) hosts the different-subject
marker -ce-, which indicates that its subject is referentially different from the main clause
subject. In addition, it only expresses relative (sequential) tense. Roberts classifies such
verbal forms as non-finite.
There are, however, problems with the traditional definition of finiteness as a property
of the verb. The same form may have different inflections in different syntactic contexts.
For instance, Nikolaeva (2007a) shows that, in Northern Khanty action, nominals inflect
for agreement when they head complement and adverbial clauses, but not when they
head relative clauses. If finiteness is a verbal property and agreement is a relevant crite-
rion, the status of such forms is difficult to evaluate. Morphological criteria are not appli-
cable to languages without inflectional morphology such as Chinese or Vietnamese
where the verb never inflects, or languages like Slave where the same inflected form is
used in all syntactic contexts and subordination is indicated by position alone (Rice
1989). In Stassen’s (1985:76–83) terminology, such languages exhibit the ‘balancing’
strategy of linking two states of affairs when both verbs are structurally of the same rank.
Moreover, non-finite (morphologically meagre) forms are not always used as dependent
predicates. Even ‘well-behaved’ European infinitives may occur in root contexts where
they express various illocutionary meanings such as directive, deliberative, interrogative
or exclamative, see Lasser (1997) for an extensive discussion. On the other hand, imper-
atives do not embed but display properties commonly thought of as diagnostics for non-
finiteness (see Section 3). In other words, distributional and inflectional criteria may be
in conflict.
These facts are well-known and have led typologists to doubt the universality of the
finite ⁄non-finite distinction defined as a strict opposition between a finite (inflected and
Typology of Finiteness 3
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independently used) and a non-finite (uninflected dependent) verb. The problem was
addressed in various places starting from Joseph (1983), see Noonan (1985), Palmer
(1986), Koptjevskaja-Tamm (1993, 1994) and Vincent (1998), as well as more recent
surveys in Nikolaeva (2007a) and Cristofaro (2007).
3. Finiteness and the Semantics of Subordination
In more recent typological work finiteness was reanalysed as something more abstract,
essentially a clausal category that is only secondarily reflected on the verb. A number of
studies argued that the nature of finiteness has to do with the semantics of subordination.
As demonstrated by the patterns cited in the previous section, traditionally defined
non-finiteness is a matter of reduced expression, when some elements are omitted and
some morphological contrasts are not available. Canonical finite clauses express more
featural distinctions on the verb than non-finite clauses. It is commonly agreed that the
reduction of finiteness signals thematic dependence on the textual context. Dependent
clauses are often based on uninflected or poorly inflected forms because (certain types of)
subordinate predications are semantically and pragmatically dependent of main predica-
tions in terms of time reference and the identity of participants (Noonan 1985; Givo
´n
1990; Hengeveld 1998; Cristofaro 2003). The value of the missing features is provided
clause-externally, by the main clause, as we saw, for instance, in Amele. Predictable infor-
mation tends to remain unexpressed because of the economy considerations discussed by
many functional typologists, which disfavour the redundant expression of grammatical
meanings (Haiman 1985; Croft 1991; Bybee 1994; Givo
´n 2001). On the other hand, in
main predications, tense and participants are established independently.
This asymmetry is said to be relevant for finiteness but many typologists maintain that
finiteness is not binary. Rather, it is a scalar phenomenon defined by a cluster of correlat-
ing parameters on a language-particular basis. In this approach, no decision is needed as
to what feature is definitional for finiteness, because it has different morphosyntactic man-
ifestations across languages (Comrie 1976; Noonan 1985; Palmer 1986; Koptjevskaja-
Tamm 1993; Hengeveld 1998).
Givo
´n (1990:Ch. 19, 2001:Ch. 18, and other works) argues that semantic integration
into a higher clause is reflected at the morphosyntactic level by the structural downgrad-
ing (reduction) of the dependent clause with respect to the ‘prototypical transitive main
clause’. It involves the loss of verbal properties (such as TAM or person ⁄number marking)
and the acquisition of nominal properties [such as case marking, co-occurrence with
determiners, omission of verbal arguments (in particular, subjects) or their encoding as
possessors or obliques] on the part of the verb describing the dependent event. The gram-
matical notion of finiteness refers to the degree of this syntactic integration. As such,
finiteness has to be a gradual category: a construction is not finite or non-finite but can
be ‘more’ or ‘less’ finite, depending on how many features it displays that deviate from
the prototypical main clause pattern. For instance, the English example (2a) is claimed to
be ‘less finite’ than (2b) because the subject is encoded by the possessive case and aspec-
tual distinctions cannot be expressed.
(2) a. Her knowing math well helped.
b. Having known math well since childhood, she …(Givo
´n 2001:26)
What properties are relevant for downgrading is a language-particular matter, so the
degree to which the non-finite (nominalized) clause differs from the finite clause is a
4 Irina Nikolaeva
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matter of considerable cross-linguistic variation. But finiteness is still a universally valid
category encompassing any property that involves deviation from the independent clause
pattern. Givo
´n (1990:853) refers to it as a complex multifeatured ‘meta-phenomenon’.
Other research suggests that one should abandon the idea of finiteness as a single category
which can be defined through a number of formal properties. Cristofaro (2007) speculates
that finiteness is essentially an epiphenomenon and not a part of speakers’ linguistic knowl-
edge. Subordinate clauses show various degrees of conformance to the independent clausal
pattern. But since different criteria must be used for different languages, there is no reason to
assume that they instantiate the same grammatical category. Instead, finiteness should be
viewed as the realization of a cross-linguistic tendency for certain parameters to correlate
with each other, motivated in terms of functional principles. This conclusion stands in
accordance with the popular idea that grammatical categories are construction- and lan-
guage-specific, whereas the universals of grammar are manifested in a number of correspon-
dence principles between form and function (e.g. Dryer 1997; Croft 2001).
Based on a sample of 80 languages, Cristofaro (2003, 2007) argues that the cross-lin-
guistic distribution of desentencialization phenomena follows predictable patterns. For
example, the absence of person agreement on the verb or the encoding of the dependent
subject as the possessor entails the absence of TAM distinctions or their expression by
means of special forms. This generalization is expressed in the following format: ‘Person
agreement not expressed fiTAM not expressed special TAM forms’. Incompatibility
with an overt subject also entails the absence of TAM. This can be demonstrated in Pun-
jabi control constructions, where the dependent event is expressed as an uninflected
infinitive and cannot have its own subject (3a), and in Tamil action nominals, which take
an overt subject but show no agreement (3b).
(3) a. Ma
˜i Tur sakdaa a
˜a
˜
I walk able.PRS.M am
I can walk. (Bhatia 1993:263)
b. siita kaalayile va-nt-atu
Sita morning.LOC come-PST-AN
Sita’s coming in the morning. (Asher 1982:25)
According to Cristofaro, implications obey a number of principles which have been inde-
pendently suggested in the functionally orientated literature. They pertain to the cogni-
tive status of the state of affairs expressed by the relevant clause and the type of semantic
relationship between the main and dependent clauses.
Both Givo
´n’s and Cristofaro’s approaches involve scales based on hierarchically orga-
nized properties which are measured against each other. Scales suggest the implicational
relations of the type ‘if A then B’. This is also true of Vincent (1998), who suggests that
tense ⁄mood ⁄agreement morphology, dependent ⁄independent status and compatibility
with an overt (non-oblique) subject are logically independent parameters, but there
appears to be an implicational interaction between them. In particular, for all languages, if
person and ⁄or number and ⁄or tense are marked on the dependent forms, then they are
also marked on the independent forms (Vincent 1998:147, 151).
However, parameters crucially implicated in the definition of finiteness appear not to
stand in exceptionless implicational relations. Cristofaro herself notices that correlations
do have exceptions because various features do not always come together as predicted by
the theory. In Turkish the same matrix verbs that take fully finite embeddings allow for
complements which lack agreement and whose subjects stand in the accusative (Kornfilt
Typology of Finiteness 5
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2007). But there is no difference in terms of tense, so this is a violation of the suggested
implication.
(4) a. [Sen-i sınav-ıgec¸-ecek] san-ıyor-um.
you-ACC test-ACC pass-FUT believe-PRS-SG
I believe you will pass the test.
b. [Sen sınav-ıgec¸-ecek-sin] san-ıyor-um.
you.NOM test-ACC pass-FUT-2SG believe-PRS-1SG
I believe you will pass the test.
Another counter-example is Nivkh where (some) forms occurring exclusively or mostly in
dependent contexts express more agreement features than independent forms. According to
Gruzdeva (2001), the indicative exhibits subject agreement in number but not in person,
while modal independent forms (interrogative, realis and irrealis) have no agreement at all.
(5) a. vi-d b. vi-d-cun c. vi-citlo
go-IND go-IND-PL go-REAL
I⁄you(SG) ⁄he went we ⁄you(PL) ⁄they went I⁄you ⁄he ⁄we ⁄they did go
On the other hand, converbs employed in dependent temporal clauses show both num-
ber and person agreement.
(6) a. xu-tot b. xu-ror
ˇ
kill-CVB.1SG kill-CVB.3SG
after I killed after he killed
In Icari Dargwa, all dependent modal forms (subjunctive, conditional and concessive) dif-
ferentiate person, whereas independent past indicatives do not (Kalinina and Sumbatova
2007:203). Nivkh and Icari Dargwa then violate Vincent’s implication and Givo
´n’s
(1990:853) hierarchy, which predicts that (non-indicative) forms used in dependent con-
texts should not be marked for more verbal categories than forms used exclusively in
independent clauses.
Abandoning the scalar approach, Bisang (2001, 2007) aims to demonstrate that finite-
ness can be described as a discrete binary phenomenon. The finite ⁄non-finite distinction
depends on the obligatory linguistic expression of certain cognitive domains such as tense,
illocutionary force, person and politeness. A category is obligatory if the speaker is forced
to overtly express its value. If it is general enough to occur in every independent clause,
it gets reanalysed as a reliable indicator of sentencehood. Languages create asymmetries
between main ⁄independent and dependent clauses. An asymmetry arises if a cognitive
domain that is obligatorily expressed in an independent clause cannot occur at all or can
only occur with a reduced set of subcategories in a dependent clause. Asymmetries of this
kind are far from being universal. As mentioned above, balancing languages like Chinese
or Vietnamese have no obligatory inflectional categories and there are languages with rich
verbal morphology that do not show asymmetry. The notion of finiteness is only relevant
for deranking languages, which demonstrate a morphological asymmetry between
independent and dependent clauses. However, both the categories involved in the asym-
metry and the means of their overt expression can differ. Finiteness then is an open con-
cept in the sense that it can involve any grammatical category that overtly marks
structural independence at the highest level of sentencehood. It is discrete but not
universal, neither in the sense of individual grammatical categories that are used for its
6 Irina Nikolaeva
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expression nor in the sense that it must be marked in every language. From a cognitive
perspective, it can be viewed as a device which helps the human parser to recognize
sentences as maximal syntactic units.
There is one important proviso here. In both ‘scalar’ and ‘binary’ functional approaches
discussed in this section finiteness has to do with subordination. But the same tendencies
are observed in non-subordinated clauses with a sequential function which stand in the
medial position in narratives. Carlson (1992) shows that in a number of African languages
such clauses employ non-finite forms and explains this in terms of thematic continuity
and the high degree of coherence with the previous discourse. The same is true of
co-subordination as found in clause-chaining Papuan languages (Haiman 1980; Foley and
Van Valin 1984). Like true subordination, co-subordination is structurally asymmetrical;
however, it does not require syntactic embedding.
Second, the finite ⁄non-finite distinction is relevant for independent clauses too. Nik-
olaeva (2007b) presents abundant typological evidence that imperatives and hortatives
tend to have reduced inflection and co-occurrence with overt subjects, even though they
are limited to main ⁄independent clause and should perhaps be analysed as non-finite.
Some grammars, for instance, Holes (1990:204) for Gulf Arabic, explicitly subsume
imperatives under non-finites (together with participles and action nominals). In many
syntactic analyses imperatives lack a functional head responsible for finiteness (e.g. Plat-
zack and Rosenren 1998) or the head is somehow deficient and not associated with tense
(e.g. Akmajian 1984). The same is true of independent infinitives (Akmajian 1984; Etxe-
pare and Grohmann 2002; Reis 2003). This indicates that the finiteness opposition may
be deeper than the asymmetry defined by the semantics of subordination.
4. Opaque and Transparent Clauses
As we saw in the previous sections, existing typologies are based on morphological cri-
teria. The syntactic aspects of finiteness have not been addressed in detail in typological
work.
Givo
´n’s scales are essentially similar to ‘deverbalization’ or ‘desententialization’ hierar-
chies suggested in other literature (Noonan 1985; Croft 1991:83), which describe confor-
mance to the full sentential structure. Noonan (1985:49) introduces a distinction between
sentence-like (s-like) complements and non-s-like complements. In s-like complements
the predicate has the same syntactic relation to its subject and other arguments that it has
in the main clause, and all arguments are encoded by means of the regular case and ⁄or
adposition and agreement. For instance, embedded indicatives are balanced s-like comple-
ments, whereas embedded subjunctives are deranked s-like complements. In languages
without agreement action nominals tend to be fully s-like, as is the case in Korean and
Malayalam. In other languages, dependent constructions are not fully s-like in that they
lack typical verbal agreement. For instance, in Tundra Nenets, the finite 1SG verb bears
the inflection -dm(7a), while the dependent action nominal bears the 1SG -wbor-
rowed from the possessive paradigm (7b). Therefore the latter is not fully s-like
(7) a. m
e
n’xu
´bta-xna to-dm
I morning-LOC come-1SG
I came in the morning.
b. m
e
n’xu
´bta-xna to-qma-w
I morning-LOC come-AN-1SG.POSS
my coming in the morning
Typology of Finiteness 7
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These sentencehood criteria only concern inflectional marking: agreement, tense and case.
However, finiteness as a clausal property cannot be established simply based on morphol-
ogy: in fact, in Tundra Nenets action nominals do not differ from fully finite embeddings
in terms of their syntactic behaviour.
The syntactic aspect is of central importance to formal syntax, where finiteness is usu-
ally understood as an abstract clausal category that is only secondarily reflected on the
verb. The notion of clause being finite embraces various parameters depending on the
exact implementation, but is most often defined through syntactic opacity. In a nutshell,
a finite dependent clause represents an opaque domain in that it is not accessible to the
rules operating in the main clause because they are blocked by the dependent subject.
A non-finite clause is syntactically transparent in this sense. This of course leads to a bin-
ary understanding of finiteness in contrast to traditional typology, where the realization of
the subject is only one of the relevant parameters, but finiteness cannot be established
based on one criterion as a matter of principle.
To take just one example, in (8a) from Russian, the dependent clause is an embedded
indicative which contains the nominative subject and expresses the present tense and sub-
ject agreement in person and number. The dependent subject prevents the main subject
Petja from functioning as the antecedent of the reflexive. In contrast, in (8b), the depen-
dent clause is headed by an uninflected infinitive. The embedded subject cannot be
expressed within this clause and the reflexive is controlled by the main subject.
(8) a. Petja govorit, chto Vanja ljubit sebja.
Petya say.PRES.3SG COMP Vanya like.PRES.3SG himself
Petya
i
says that Vanya
j
likes himself
j⁄*i
.
b. Petja xochet ljubit’ sebja.
Petya
i
wants to.like himself
i
Petya
i
wants to like himself
i
.
In the Nenets example (7b), the action nominal defines an opaque domain for the pro-
cesses such as reflexive binding and the scope of adverbs, whereas the argument m
e
n’‘I’
behaves like an independent subject in all respects. The question is then which feature is
responsible for the formation of opaque domains.
Since, in this syntactic tradition, grammatical categories can only be defined if they
occupy a place in the hierarchical phrase structure, finiteness has a structural corollary: it
corresponds to a position (or a feature) on a tree from which it dominates most of the
clause. The idea that finiteness somehow represents the whole clause was implemented
by assigning it the status of a clausal head. In earlier versions of the theory, it was repre-
sented as the inflectional head (INFLº or Iº). A finite INFL has been taken to define a
tensed domain where the independent ⁄absolute tense is realized morphologically, while a
non-finite INFL is associated with a tenseless clause, as in (8b). In Government and Bind-
ing tense licences the subject’s nominative case, so the nominative is intrinsically linked
with finiteness (Chomsky 1981, 1986; Raposo 1987; others). Indeed in many European
languages, a strong correlation appears to exist between the tensed predicate and the
nominative subject, as is the case in Russian.
In research along such lines, finiteness is a binary category whose individual overt man-
ifestations—subject case licensing and tense inflections—are interdependent owing to
general principles of grammar. The basic idea behind this association is that the finite
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embedded clause is syntactically (and propositionally) independent of the main clause.
Both the nominative case and the strong tense make the clause opaque for clause-external
factors, i.e. independent from the syntactic context with respect to its temporal semantics
and the interpretation of the highest verbal argument (cf. Bianchi 2003).
In some languages, agreement is said to play a decisive role (George and Kornfilt 1981;
Raposo 1987; Fisher 1988). Compare the two Turkish sentences in (4) above. Kornfilt
(2007) argues that both in (4a) and (4b), the subject belongs to the embedded clause in
the surface structure. However, there is a difference in terms of subject case and ulti-
mately finiteness. Unlike (4b), (4a) is syntactically transparent: the non-nominative (accu-
sative) subject participates in the syntactic phenomena that belong to the matrix clause. In
particular, for the purpose of binding principles the relevant domain is the matrix clause
rather than the embedded clause. Note that the verbal form is also different: in (4b), the
embedded predicate bears subject agreement and, in (4a), agreement is absent. Kornfilt
concludes that in Turkish the factor that creates a finite domain is agreement rather than
tense. The connection between the nominative and agreement appears in the Minimalist
Program, where they are claimed to be two manifestations of the AGREE relation.
There are numerous discrepancies between morphology and syntax, which indicates
that syntactic opacity and ‘morphological’ finiteness may be independent. Welsh (Taller-
man 1998), Maltese and languages with the so-called Balkan Infinitive (Vincent
1998 1:151) have a finite ⁄non-finite distinction in the syntactic sense, but it is not reflected
in the morphology. For instance, in Modern Greek (Felix 1989; Anderson 2001) some
clauses with fully inflected subjunctives are syntactically transparent. A number of lan-
guages without inflectional morphology seem to exhibit familiar syntactic effects and
therefore have a structural distinction equivalent to that of finite ⁄non-finite. Thus, in
Khmer there is no tense ⁄agreement inflection on the verb. But according to Fisher
(1988), clauses embedded under the verbs tell, say and the like can take an overt subject,
while clauses embedded under volitional verbs cannot.
(9) a. Sina prap thaa [(wi) caNt w psaa]
Sina say that he want go market
Sina
i
said that he
i
wants to go to the market ⁄Sina
i
said that he
j
wants to go 26to
the market.
b. Sina caN[(*wi) t w psaa]
Sina want he go market
Sina wants to go to the market ⁄*Sina wants him to go to the market.
Japanese has two types of complement clauses, but only one type is actually a full clausal
unit that licences a subject. This is not reflected in morphology, as both types are based
on verbs inflected for tense but not agreement (Sells 2007). Diachronic studies also con-
firm that changes in finiteness operate at different levels and morphology does not mirror
all structural distinctions. Ledgeway (2007) shows that the loss of person marking in Nea-
politan infinitives observed by the second half of the 17
th
century has had no effect on
syntax. On the contrary, Southern Calabrian clauses headed by the complementizer MODO
have been decategorialized from syntactically finite to non-finite, despite exhibiting no
loss in the morphological realization of finiteness.
More recent versions of generative syntax have given up the strong isomorphism
between syntactic structure and morphology and maintain that clausal finiteness correlates
with tense and agreement inflection on a language-particular basis. Finiteness is interpreted
as an abstract syntactic category, whose function is to regulate the syntactic distribution of
Typology of Finiteness 9
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NPs, rather than the morphological features overtly realized on the verb, whereas various
typological patterns of inflectional marking are explained by head-movement operations
available for functional heads in the inflectional domain of individual languages.
Although the highest clausal level headed by a complementizer was not at first consid-
ered responsible for the realization of finiteness, finiteness was recently associated with
the complementizer domain (CP) rather than the inflectional domain (IP). Theory-neu-
tral evidence for this contention comes from the fact that in a number of languages the
choice of a complementizer correlates with the finiteness of the clause it introduces and
that inflectional categories can be spelled out at C. For instance, in Irish the C-domain
expresses more basic temporal information than that found on finite verbs: the comple-
mentizer is marked as past ⁄non-past, while the finite verb opposes past, present and future
(Adger 2007). This idea can be implemented in different ways. In Chomsky (2000) and
other work, syntactically opaque (finite) clauses are full CPs, which select for a TP ⁄IP
positively specified for tense, whereas syntactically transparent (non-finite) clauses are
defective tenseless IPs ⁄TPs. In Rizzi’s (1997) ‘cartographic’ system finiteness is structurally
independent of tense and located at the highest sentential level (CP rather than IP), see
also Adger (2007). It is still contributed by only one functional head (Fin), which selects
a finite or non-finite INFL. The finite INFL in its turn has been split up into more and
more functional heads, some of them related to tense and agreement.
5. Finiteness and the Interpretation of the Clause
If clausal finiteness is a syntactic primitive represented as a feature or position on the tree,
depending on one’s syntactic assumptions, the question is if it conveys interpretation-rele-
vant information. In other words, is this category purely syntactic or both syntactic and
semantic? The functional content of finiteness has been a matter of some debate.
Holmberg and Platzack (1995), Hoekstra and Hyams (1998), Hoekstra et al. (1999)
and Bianchi (2000, 2003) suggest that finiteness expresses temporal anchoring. According
to Roussou (2001), the role of Finis quantification over time intervals and possible
worlds and providing an anchoring point to the speech time. In this sense finiteness is
context-dependent and belongs together with deixis. If this is true, the finite ⁄non-finite
nature of a complement is basically determined by its semantics, i.e. by the selecting
predicate or other operator in the matrix clause. One would not expect to find a funda-
mental difference in finiteness between the same semantic types of complements in differ-
ent languages. Indeed, the cross-linguistic picture seems to be more or less consistent:
complements of cognitive predicates (know,believe) are canonically more finite than com-
plements of volitional and some other predicates, as was mentioned above for Khmer.
This is because the former introduce an independent world (existential temporal anchor-
ing) and the latter introduce a set of worlds (intensional anchoring).
In other research finiteness is related to a more rudimentary semantic property referred
to as assertion. This idea is present in many studies on V2 in Germanic, where the move-
ment of the finite verb into the V2 position appears to be a strategy to encode the asser-
tive force (Platzack and Holmberg 1989; Wechsler 1991; Brandner 2004) and was
explored in detail by Klein (1994, 1998). Klein argues that finiteness is a primitive gram-
matical category in its own right, whose major function is the relating of the descriptive
propositional content of the utterance to its topic part. As such, it comprises at least two
meaningful components: the assertive component and the tense component. The former
indicates that the assertion is made; the latter restricts the assertion to a particular time,
i.e. relates the descriptive component to the time span about which the assertion is made.
10 Irina Nikolaeva
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The expression of assertion and tense are usually associated with the finite verb. This can
be seen in English The book WAS on the table: the prosodically prominent auxiliary carries
both a positive assertion (in contrast to The book was not on the table) and a temporal
meaning (in contrast to The book is on the table). As we saw above, in deranking languages
non-finite verbal forms are usually employed in subordinate clauses, which rarely carry
independent assertion, and in non-assertive independent utterances such as imperatives,
exclamatives and the like.
However, ‘semantic’ finiteness is an abstract category which, on Klein’s account, is in
principle independent of the verb. Non-finite forms can serve as main predicates in asser-
tive utterances. This is observed in the so-called ‘narrative infinitives’ in Romance and
Slavic, cf. the following examples from French and Latin:
(10) a. Et lui de rire.
And he started laughing.
b. Tum redire paulatim amor obsequii
then return.INF little.by.little love.NOM obedience.GEN.SG
Then the love of obedience returned little by little. (Tac. ann. 1, 28, 6)
In European languages, narrative infinitives are the only type of root infinitives that has
assertive force and requires a referentially independent subject exhibiting the usual array
of subject properties (see Nikolaeva 2007b, for a discussion). Similarly, Swedish has
clauses that are truly finite from the semantic point of view but lack a finite form (Sells
2007). The auxiliary ha which encodes the information about force and tense can be
deleted in the presence of the modal words kanske and manne ‘maybe’ located in the V2
position. Sells suggests that in such cases even though there is no tensed verb, a hearer
could recover the finiteness of the clause as it is clearly recognizable as expressing asser-
tion and has a nominative subject.
These examples demonstrate the semantic and syntactic effects of finiteness in the
absence of finite morphology. The opposite case can be illustrated by fully inflected
exclamations, such as the following Russian construction:
(11) C
ˇtob ty sdox!
COMP you(M) die.PST.SG.M
Would that you die!
This example has a regular subject and finite morphology, but crucially lacks semantic
finiteness: it is not assertive but rather intended as a direct expressions of wish. In fact, the
verbal tense is not deictic here and does not express actual temporal anchoring. The tense
is determined by the complementizer and in this sense it is ‘fake’, just as embedded tensed
subjunctives in Balkan languages. Another example of fake tense in a dependent clause is
the so-called pseudo-relative construction in Italian (Barron 2000). The verb in the
pseudo-relative appears to be tensed, but has no temporal reference on its own. If the main
verb is in the present, then the verb of the pseudo-relative is in the present, too; if the
main clause is in the past, then the verb of the pseudo-relative is in the imperfective tense.
(12) Leo ha visto [Clio che mangiava la pizza]
Leo have.PRS.3SG see.PP Clio that eat.PST.IPFV.3SG the pizza
Leo saw Clio eating the pizza
Typology of Finiteness 11
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So pseudo-relatives have no independent temporal interpretation but are morphologically
tensed, have subjects and express subject agreement. They provide additional evidence
against the argument that finiteness simply has to do with a positive specification of tense
and agreement features: there is a clear conflict between finite morphology and syntax,
on the one hand, and non-finite semantics, on the other. That the formal and functional
sides of finiteness do not go hand in hand is also confirmed by aquisitional studies (e.g.
Lasser 1997; Gretsch and Perdue 2007), which show that both for adult L2 learner and
for children, acquiring the formal and functional aspects of finiteness involves two inde-
pendent learning tasks. This suggests that finiteness is not a primitive: if the universal con-
tent of this category is to be maintained, it must be decomposed.
Short Biography
Irina Nikolaeva has studied in Moscow and San Diego and received a PhD in Linguistics
from the University of Leiden in 1998. She has taught at the Linguistics Departments of
the Universities of Moscow, Konstanz and Oxford and is currently a Lecturer in Linguis-
tics at SOAS (University of London). Her interests lie in the field of syntax, morphology,
typology, lexicalist theories of grammar and documentation of endangered languages. She
has published several books on Uralic, Altaic and Palaeosiberian linguistics based on
extensive fieldwork, as well as works on typology, the syntax–semantics and syntax–infor-
mation structure interface and historical-comparative linguistics.
Note
*Correspondence address: Irina Nikolaeva, University of London, London, UK 25
. E-mail: in3@soas.ac.uk
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14 Irina Nikolaeva
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