[Lingtyp] Moods and non-finites?

Sat Jul 15 13:45:23 UTC 2023

Dear All,

Many thanks for the many replies that are longer and denser than I can chew and digest in real time! I like the way we can look at things from various perspectives on this list. Unsurprisingly, it appears that both "mood" and "finiteness" are considered matters of definition here, and we are far from having one-size-fits-all definitions for these notions, and are probably not attempting that either.

Most of the comments revolve around semantic issues rather than morphology and the morphological moods which was my original starting point. While I appreciate all of them, and will read them over and over again, I'd like to limit my own comments to Juergen's ponderings about the distinction between modal(ity) operators and mood operators. This distinction seems to provide a partial explanation to not only the participle in my original message, but also to the fact that the Finnish "potential mood" (_-ne-_ 'probably') can also be marginally combined with the conditional mood (-isi- 'would'), where _anta-ne-n_ 'I will probably give' and _anta-isi-n_ 'I would give' yield forms like _anta-ne-isi-n_ 'I would probably give'. (Now, some Finnish list members may object, but even though the latter form seems to have its roots in somewhat arbitrary language planning in the 19th century, such forms are still being used also by those who don't know that "such forms do not really exist".)

In addition to the responses on the list, I'd like to mention that Sergey Say made me aware of his interesting paper "Нефинитные формы сослагательного наклонения в русском языке" ('Non-finite forms of the subjunctive mood in Russian', https://nenadict.iling.spb.ru/publications/1525). Although the Russian subjunctive is not about morphology only but consists of the past tense followed by the particle _бы_ (_by_), the non-normative use of _by_ with the infinitive (and to lesser extent with participles and converbs) seems to have many resemblances with the Finnish potential non-finites.

To those who are interested in my own problem and the Finnish non-finites: As it appears that there are no global, typological bans on combining "(morphological) moods" and "non-finites" (however defined), let me illustrate what seems to have happened in Finnish where the 3PL suffix _-vat/-vät_ goes historically back to the nominative plural (_t_) of the present participle in _-va/-vä_. I don't have first-hand evidence that the "potential participle" has emerged in plural at first, but the following analogy seems to be the neatest explanation for what has happened:

(1) Remonti-t     valmistu-vat     elokuu-ssa.
    renovation-PL be.completed-3PL August-INE
    'The renovations will be completed in August.'
    –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
(2) elokuu-ssa    valmistu-va-t         remonti-t
    August-INE    be.completed-PTCP-3PL renovation-PL
    'the renovations that will be completed in August'

equals to the potential mood as follows:

(3) Remonti-t     valmistu-ne-vat      elokuu-ssa.
    renovation-PL be.completed-POT-3PL August-INE
    'The renovations will probably be completed in August.'
   –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
(4)                           X

...where X is, by analogy,

(4) elokuu-ssa   valmistu-ne-va-t          remonti-t
    August-INE   be.completed-POT-PTCP-3PL renovation-PL
    'the renovations that will probably be completed in August'

In (4), the verb form _valmistunevat_ is fully in line with the Finnish morphology, as it is the very form for the plural potential 'will probably be completed' (3). What is new here is that _valmistunevat_ has been reanalyzed as a plural participle based on the potential mood stem _valmistu-ne-_. Since the form is morphologically and semantically transparent, it appears quite natural to combine the potential mood with the participle marker. And as the plural _valmistu-ne-va-t_ is a quite unproblematic in itself, it is only natural to extend the use of the "potential participle" from plural to singular as well (_valmistu-ne-va_ in Example (2) of my original query).

As native speakers, me and my informants are quite happy with the potential participles that can be attested in hundreds, so that the only major "problem" is that the grammar leaks in the way that only one of the four moods of the language is occasionally used in non-finites such as the ones seen here – although they "shouldn't", because the Finnish mood is traditionally defined as belonging to finite verbs only. (There are also some other analogous non-finites, but they are more marginal and more difficult to explain.)

Best,

Jussi

________________________________
Frá: Christian Lehmann <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de>
Sent: laugardagur, 15. júlí 2023 16:23
Til: Adam James Ross Tallman
Afrit: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
Efni: Re: [Lingtyp] Moods and non-finites?

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<mailto: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<mailto:christianw_lehmann at arcor.de>
Web:    https://www.christianlehmann.eu
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--
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<mailto:christianw_lehmann at arcor.de>
Web:    https://www.christianlehmann.eu
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