[Lingtyp] Moods and non-finites?

[Adam James Ross Tallman]

I'll try to answer the questions directly as someone who is definitely not
in the Finnish tradition.

The question wasː

" 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."

No, I wouldn't regard this as problematic necessarily, because I think it
just depends on how you define finiteness in Finnish. Your question makes
me think that maybe the relevant construction grates against some
distinctions made in (Finnish) traditional grammar (nonfininte = lack of
mood; potential = mood??).

There's a book edited by Nikolaeva called *Finiteness: Theoretical and
Empirical Foundations*. I read this book some time ago, but came away from
it asking what exactly we were gaining by talking about finiteness as a
binary distinction to begin with:

This is the case in both formal and functional approaches respectively:

"I have argued, in line with expectations, that there is no clear mapping
from
the traditional notion of finiteness to the categories of formal grammar.
There
are phenomena, and there are attempted explanations of those phenomena
which are embedded within a theoretical system. Typically, the terms in
which
the explanation is couched will be far removed from the terms in
which the original phenomenon was described, and I believe this is the case
for finiteness." (Adger 2007:28)

"Thus, the notions of finiteness and nonfiniteness do not provide either an
adequate account of a speaker’s linguistic knowledge or an adequate
description
of particular phenomena in individual languages. In this respect, finiteness
and nonfiniteness are not cross-linguistically relevant categories, and not
even categories relevant to divergent constructions within particular
languages." (Cristofaro 2007:109)

For a functional-typological audience, I'm sort of surprised the
distinction is still brought up as if it was discrete (or not just a matter
of definition as Martin points out), since Bybee discussed the issue of
inflectional status as a continuum with lexical/derivational in her
Morphology book some 30+ years ago. It's also well-known that these notions
of inflection/finiteness are tricky or nonapplicable in many so-called
polysynthetic languages (e.g. de Reuse 2009).

Are there any parallels to forms like this, and possibly studies on these
issues?"

Speaking for myself, I think it depends on how close a construction has to
be to the Finnish participle for you to regard it as "parallel". All
same-subject clauses, different subject clauses, nominalized /
noun-modifying clauses can take the "remote future" in Chácobo. Some of
them can take a "volitional" some not. And the few clauses I might regard
as subordinate in Araona can take a "potential" marker. Any one of these
clauses (except *probably* the different subject clauses), might be
translation equivalents of the Finnish participle.

I think if you fish around, you'll find there are reasons to regard any of
the aforementioned constructions as finite or nonfinite, especially insofar
as finite means "less categories". If its restricted to independent
illocutionary force, depends on what type of clause-type marking we are
looking (imperative, reportative, interrogative). -

best,

p.s. if you're interested in more on Chacobo/Araona private message me :)

Adam

Adger, D. (2007). Three domains of finiteness: a Minimalist perspective. In
I. Nikolaeva (Ed.), *Finiteness: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations*
(pp. 23-58). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bybee, J. L. (1985). *Morphology: A study of the relation between meaning
and form.* Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Cristafaro, S. (2007). Deconstructing categories: finiteness in a
functional-typological perspective. In I. Nikolaeva (Ed.), *Finiteness:
Theoretical and Empirical issues* (pp. 91-114). Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

de Reuse, W. J. (2009). Polysynthesis as a typological feature: An attempt
at a characterization from Eskimo and Athabaskan perspectives. In M.-A.
Mahieu, & N. Tersis (Eds.), *Variations in Polysynthesis: The Eskaleut
languages* (pp. 19-34). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co.







On Sat, Jul 15, 2023 at 11:42 AM Wiemer, Bjoern <wiemerb at uni-mainz.de>
wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> if I my add some questions to this interesting discussion, I’d first like
> to say that I’m much sympathetic with Jürgen’s attempt at drawing apart
> “mood” and “modality”. I could even “buy” his definitions – as a working
> basis – but I find it important to specify some things.
>
>             First, when modality is generally defined as a domain in which
> NEC(essity) and POSS(ibility) operate on _*propositions*_, this raises
> the question what you do with non-epistemic modality. While epistemic
> judgments clearly reside on propositions, deontic and other kinds of
> modality on “lower layers” are not related to propositions, but to states
> of affairs – unless you want to say that, e.g., a moral judgment like
>
>
>
> (1)       *People should not kill*
>
>
>
> or prohibitions like
>
>
>
> (2)       *You are not to smoke in this room*
>
>
>
> or characterizations that can easily be read like assignments of general
> dispositions, as in
>
>
>
> (3)       *Ernie eats 20 pancakes in one take*
>
>
>
> are seen as “translations” of something like
>
>
>
> (1a)*      It is required that people should not kill*.
>
> (2a)*      We urge you not to smoke in this room*.
>
> (3a)      *Ernie is capable of eating 20 pancakes in one take*.
>
>
>
> (Note that 1-3 are not truth-conditionally falsifiable.)
>
> I mean there is a difference between uttering a judgment that is not
> epistemic (an obligation, a statement about somebody’s dispositions, and
> more) and giving a “description” of that non-epistemic judgment. Otherwise
> I don’t understand how we might say that ALL modality is about
> NEC:POSS-contrasts over propositions.
>
>
>
> Second, if “mood” is defined as relating to illocutionary force, then this
> rules out mood distinctions that have been made for subordinate clauses.
> Somewhat ironically, the term “subjunctive”, or “conditional”, seems to
> have been coined for means (morphological markers on the verb or the VP)
> that occurs only, or predominantly, in subordinate clauses; and subordinate
> clauses are often claimed to be void of independent illocutionary force.
>
>
>
> In addition, above all that has been said on these intriguing issues so
> far since Jussi came up with his question, the question of “mood” becomes
> complicated even more when we take into account that in certain, hm,
> traditions of linguistic research “mood”, or more specific terms like
> “subjunctive”, have been applied to scattered marking on clause level that
> likewise distinguishes things like illocutionary force (representative vs
> directive speech acts) or that occur in certain control constructions (*I
> want* SoA, *I order* *that* SoA, etc.), for clausal complements with
> weakened epistemic support (e.g., after negated cognitive or perception
> verbs: *I don’t think/believe that P*; *I don’t see that P*), or in other
> structures of clause combining that are in some languages (e.g., Romance)
> regularly marked with a morphological subjunctive/conditional, or in other
> (recent) traditions are discussed under headings like “irrealis”
> (understood as a notional distinction, not a class of tight structural
> means).
>
> In many cases, “analytical subjunctive” has been referred to structures as
> in Balkan Slavic, where all these aforementioned notional distinctions and
> structural environments are marked (or can be marked) with no specific
> morphology (on the verb or other constituents of the clause), but by
> clause-initial connectives (the proper status of which has been subject to
> countless debates) that contrast with standard (neutral, default)
> complementizers (Engl. ‘that’). See (4a) vs (4b) from Bulgarian: the
> standard complementizer *č**e* (associated with full epistemic support)
> in (4a) can occur with any tense (here: the aorist, *rešix*), while the
> connective *da* occurs, among other things, in complements of predicates
> that code an intention, as in (4b); *da* restricts the array of tenses
> which are otherwise allowed in the “indicative” (*da* cannot occur with
> the aorist, but preferably occurs with present tense or the perfect).
>
>
>
> (4a)        *Mislj-a, **č**e **re**š**i-x vsi**č**ki zada**č**i*
>
> think[ipfv]-prs.1sg comp solve[pfv]-aor.1sg all task.pl
>
> *na testa*.
>
> on test.def
>
> ‘I think I (have) solved all tasks from the test.’
>
>
>
> (4b)        *Mislj-a **da **izlezn-a malko na v**ă**zdux.*
>
> think[ipfv]-prs.1sg con go_out[pfv]-prs.1sg a_bit on air
>
> ‘I think I’ll go a little bit out into fresh air.’
>
>
>
> There is, thus, a clear contrast between *če* and *da* as means of
> connecting clausal complements to higher-order predicates, and *da* is
> also used in independent clauses, e.g. as kind of imperative (e.g.,
> Macedonian *Da gi pre**čekate**! *‘Welcome them!’). Both connectives are
> practically in complementary distribution, and they differ as for the range
> of verb forms with which they can combine, but there is no special verb
> morphology designed to mark all the aforementioned clause types.
>
> In the literature, *da*-clauses are often dubbed “analytic subjunctives”
> (or simply “analytical mood”). This parlance came up, as far as I can see,
> predominantly in generative literature, but it has been adopted in some
> (prominent) linguistic work, such as Noonan’s article on clausal
> complementation. Though I personally find this unfortunate (it creates more
> confusion than it helps clarifying how languages are structured, and how
> they are structured differently), this is just a fact of linguistic
> practice. The least one can (and should) do, in my view, is to clearly say
> whether “mood” (or any assumed subcategory, like “subjunctive”) is to be
> defined as a language-specific structure (e.g., the traditional subjunctive
> marked on the verb) or as a notional domain. If the latter is at stake,
> then we nonetheless need clear-cut form/structure-oriented criteria saying
> whether illocutionary force distinctions or distinctions like full vs weak
> epistemic support in clausal complements, or of what happens in control
> constructions (e.g., after manipulative verbs), are marked by clausal
> connectives (a prime means in Slavic languages), or by verbal morphology
> (as probably in Romance) or by both (as in Romanian, unsurprisingly as an
> “overlap” between Slavic and Romance). Otherwise things like “mood choice”
> and “complementizer choice” will inevitably run into one another and become
> indistinguishable, at least if one looks out for comparative concepts.
>
>
>
> Sorry for bothering you. But the intricacies, and the pervasive relevance
> of these considerations can be seen in Slavic languages par excellence. I
> happened to bring this down in a (hopefully) comprehensive way in a recent
> paper available under
>
>             https://doi.org/10.1515/slaw-2023-0012
>
> or on
>
> https://uni-mainz.academia.edu/Bj%C3%B6rnWiemer
>
> (Between analytical mood and clause-initial particles – on the diagnostics
> of subordination for (emergent) complementizers. *Zeitschrift für
> Slawistik* 68-2, 187-260)
>
>
>
> I have no solution for how to define a comparative concept of “mood”, but
> it seems obvious that form- and function-oriented criteria must not be used
> interchangeably (to say the least).
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Björn (Wiemer).
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *Von:* Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *Im
> Auftrag von *Juergen Bohnemeyer
> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 14. Juli 2023 22:32
> *An:* Jussi Ylikoski <jussi.ylikoski at utu.fi>;
> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] Moods and non-finites?
>
>
>
> Dear Jussi – I see that you’re getting as many opinions as you’re getting
> responses 😊 But I’m going to add mine, simply because none of the other
> users seems to have mentioned what I see as the primary issue.
>
>
>
> Fwiw., from my point of view, the key question here is not finiteness, but
> semantics. Let’s assume that _*-ne*_ does indeed have a single “semantic
> meaning” (as opposed to pragmatic implicatures arising from it in various
> contexts), and that meaning is, as you say, epistemic modality.
>
>
>
> The question then arises whether one wishes to conflate the notional
> categories (a.k.a. comparative concepts) of ‘mood’ and ‘modality’ or to
> keep them distinct. Personally, I prefer the latter, since they are quite
> distinct conceptually and in my experience, their expression tends to be in
> first approximation independent, or at least distinct, in the languages of
> the world. But, again, this is a consideration purely of utility – there’s
> no correct or incorrect answer.
>
>
>
> If I were to propose typologically useful working definitions for the
> comparative concepts ‘mood’ and ‘modality’, I would offer something like
> this:
>
>
>
>    - Modality classifies propositions into those that are necessarily
>    (not) true and those that are potentially (not) true. (Non-modalized speech
>    acts simply steer clear of this classification.) This distinction can be
>    conceptualized in terms of quantification over possible worlds, force
>    dynamics, or however else one sees fit. And to say that a proposition is
>    necessarily or possibly true requires some, usually contextually
>    determined, set of assumptions against which the modalized speech act is
>    evaluated. In the case of epistemic modality, that set of assumptions is
>    the sum of what the speaker purports to know.
>
>
>
>    - Mood classifies utterances in terms of whether their ‘topic
>    situation’ is (assumed to be) part of the interlocutors’ actual world (the
>    speech situation and its past) or not (the speech situation’s future and
>    counterfactual past situations). An utterance’s topic situation is the
>    situation it makes a statement or promise, asks a question, issues a
>    directive, etc., about.
>
>
>
> Now, I’m not aware of any theory of finiteness I’d be ready to endorse,
> including my own. (I guess you could take this this along the lines of the
> famous Groucho Marx quip that he’d never join a club that would accept him
> as a member.) But, based on the above characterization, modality is a
> propositional operator, whereas mood is a speech-act-level operator. And
> since propositions are the objects/arguments of speech acts, we should
> expect to generally find modality further “down” in the syntactic
> structure, i.e., closer to the lexical content, than mood.
>
>
>
> So this means that if _*-ne*_ is indeed a modal operator, I would
> consider its showing up in nonfinite projections less surprising than if it
> were a mood operator.
>
>
>
> Lastly, none of the above should be construed as a criticism of the
> traditional terminological practice of Finnish linguistics. The cognancy of
> _*modal*_ and _*modus*_ alone makes it almost unreasonable to expect
> terminological traditions to be answerable to the semantic factoids cited
> above. Particularly when paired with paucity of thorough and typologically
> sensitive semantic work on the issues.
>
>
>
> HTH! – Juergen
>
>
>
>
>
> Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
> Professor, Department of Linguistics
> University at Buffalo
>
> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus
> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260
> Phone: (716) 645 0127
> Fax: (716) 645 3825
> Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu
> Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/
>
> Office hours Tu/Th 3:30-4:30pm in 642 Baldy or via Zoom (Meeting ID 585
> 520 2411; Passcode Hoorheh)
>
> There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In
> (Leonard Cohen)
>
> --
>
>
>
>
>
> *From: *Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of
> Jussi Ylikoski <jussi.ylikoski at utu.fi>
> *Date: *Thursday, July 13, 2023 at 20:22
> *To: *lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> >
> *Subject: *[Lingtyp] Moods and non-finites?
>
> 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/
>
>
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>


-- 
Adam J.R. Tallman
Post-doctoral Researcher
Friedrich Schiller Universität
Department of English Studies
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