[Lingtyp] Moods and non-finites?

[Jussi Ylikoski]

Dear typologists,

I have a question about the notion of mood as a grammatical, and more specifically, morphological category. It should not have come as a surprise to me that on a general, language-specific level, various dictionaries of linguistic terms define and characterize mood quite vaguely, but I am still surprised to see how difficult it is to find explicit statements on whether or not morphological moods are generally limited to finite verb forms or not.

Put concretely, I am wondering whether it is conceptually (or typologically) odd or natural to regard the Finnish "potential mood" marker -ne- a mood, as its use is not strictly limited to finite verb forms (2) but can also attested in some – and only some – non-finites such as the present participle (2), in contrast to the unmarked or "indicative" participle seen in (3). The semantic function of the potential in -ne- is that of epistemic modality:

(1) Remontti   valmistu-ne-e        elokuu-ssa.
    renovation be.completed-POT-3SG August-INE
    'The renovation will probably be completed in August.'

(2) elokuu-ssa valmistu-ne-va            remontti
    August-INE be.completed-POT-PTCP.PRS renovation
    'the renovation that will probably be completed in August'

(3) elokuu-ssa valmistu-va           remontti
    August-INE be.completed-PTCP.PRS renovation
    'the renovation that will be completed in August'


In light of the Finnish (and more generally Uralic) grammatical tradition, participials seen in (2) do not and cannot exist, but if they do as it seems, inflectional moods do not behave like this, and the morpheme -ne- in valmistu-ne-va should probably be analyzed as a kind of derivational affix instead.

I would be interested to know whether linguists outside the Finnish tradition see it as problematic or unproblematic to call the morpheme -ne- in valmistu-ne-va (2) a participle a marker of a morphological (inflectional) mood. Are there any parallels to forms like this, and possibly studies on these issues?

Best regards,

Jussi


https://users.utu.fi/jumyli/

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20230713/f3214760/attachment.htm>