[Lingtyp] Moods and non-finites?

Sat Jul 15 13:23:28 UTC 2023

Okay, then let's agree that no-one of those who have taken part in this 
discussion has implied any assumptions on discreteness of the 
distinction between finite and non-finite.

I see finiteness as one of those many concepts of traditional grammar 
which have, over the past two and a half millennia, proved useful in the 
description of the languages that they were coined for and for some 
other SAE languages that are sufficiently similar. Given such a 
grammatical concept, the question for the typologist is then: Assume you 
discover in an unrelated language a phenomenon which reminds you of that 
familiar concept: should the phenomenon be subsumed under it, and if so, 
under what conditions? Given a positive answer to the first question, 
you take those structural and functional features which constitute the 
traditional concept as a point of departure and relax them so that the 
new phenomenon falls under the concept. You then check whether the 
expanded concept is still useful. [And here we need an explanation of 
what constitutes the usefulness of a scientific concept.] It may, for 
instance, now overlap with other known concepts, or the relaxed criteria 
may now be too weak; so the expansion was not useful.

Now applying this to 'finite vs. non-finite': In those languages for 
which the distinction was first made, the definition is simply: A verb 
form inflected for person is finite, other verb forms are non-finite. 
And it has always been clear that the distribution of these two kinds of 
forms over syntactic constructions is such (with appropriate 
refinements) that finite forms occur in independent clauses while 
non-finite forms occur in dependent verbal constructions.

You then come across a language like Cabecar (Chibchan) in which the 
verb does not inflect for person in the first place. A possible reaction 
of the analyst is: The language lacks the finiteness distinction. Most 
analysts (including me) have not resorted to this reaction, for at least 
two reasons: First, naming the structural phenomena of every language by 
new terms only because they do not straightforwardly fall under a 
traditional concept is simply not feasible. Comparative linguists would 
no longer be able to communicate. Second, there is a more general basis 
to the traditional concept which is tangible in Cabecar, too: In certain 
dependent constructions, the verb lacks certain conjugation categories 
which it has as the main verb of an independent clause. In Cabecar, this 
is mood and aspect. Thus, Cabecar (as many other non-SAE languages) 
possesses a finiteness distinction.

In the particular case of the finiteness distinction, we are in the 
happy situation to be able to heed Saussure's and Jakobson's advice that 
what matters in language structure are differences. In the case at hand, 
it is not necessary to name any particular features like conjugation for 
person etc. to define 'finite'. It suffices that the language 
distinguish between the conjugation of a verb which is the main 
predicate of a sentence  and its conjugation in certain subordinate 
constructions, and that this distinction can be made in terms of 
conjugation categories which are marked in the former context, but not 
in the latter. The methodological situation is not nearly as comfortable 
in cases like 'ergative' or 'applicative', as these do not presuppose a 
(gradual) binary distinction.

A next step in the expansion of the concept could then be, as suggested 
by Jürgen and others before him, to apply the finiteness distinction not 
only to verb forms, but also to verbal constructions and even to 
clauses. Although an expansion of this sort has certainly been useful in 
some cases, there are always limits for such expansions. For instance, 
certain modal particles occur in German independent clauses which are 
banned from subordinate clauses. This would not seem to be a good reason 
to call the latter less finite.

It is along these lines that I think we can still make responsible use 
of traditional concepts.

Best,
Christian

> Dear Cristian and everyone,
>
> Read the comments more carefully before replying because I did not say 
> nor imply that the concept should be dispensed with.
>
> Adam
>
> On Sat, Jul 15, 2023 at 12:46 PM Christian Lehmann 
> <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> wrote:
>
>     Dear Adam and everybody,
>
>     just a brief reply to this:
>>
>>     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).
>     It is a recurrent misunderstanding among typologists, chiefly of
>     particularist persuasion, that a grammatical concept should be
>     dispensed with because it is not discrete, covers a continuum, is
>     not applicable to all languages or what not. If one takes this
>     position, then *no* grammatical concept whatsoever can be used in
>     the description of more than one language. It seems more
>     realistic, and even methodologically more fruitful, to live by
>     concepts whose cross-linguistic application is "tricky".
>     -- 
>
>     Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
>     Rudolfstr. 4
>     99092 Erfurt
>     Deutschland
>
>     Tel.: 	+49/361/2113417
>     E-Post: 	christianw_lehmann at arcor.de
>     Web: 	https://www.christianlehmann.eu
>
>     _______________________________________________
>     Lingtyp mailing list
>     Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>     https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
>
>
> -- 
> Adam J.R. Tallman
> Post-doctoral Researcher
> Friedrich Schiller Universität
> Department of English Studies

-- 

Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
Rudolfstr. 4
99092 Erfurt
Deutschland

Tel.: 	+49/361/2113417
E-Post: 	christianw_lehmann at arcor.de
Web: 	https://www.christianlehmann.eu
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