Typology of Finiteness

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 tendencydefined by a cluster of correlating parameters. In this approach no decision is needed as to whatfeature 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 asymmetrybetween dependent and independent clauses). But other research argues that the finite ⁄ nonfiniteopposition is broader because it applies to independent clauses, too. The paper shows that thereare different domains of grammar where the notion of finiteness may play a role. The nature ofthe relationship between them is to some extent arbitrary and depends on an individual language.This implies that if the universal content of this category is to be maintained, it must be decom-posed. At this stage what we need is a typologically informed approach which can provide a toolfor cross-linguistic comparison and present the whole area of finiteness-related phenomena in astructured and principled way. This is a necessary prerequisite for providing a descriptively ade-quate 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 thedefinition of finiteness and there is no guarantee that the traditional notion will play a rolein a theory of language. On the other hand, finiteness has no obvious semantico–pragmaticcorollary 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 meaningfultypology of finiteness is virtually impossible. The goal of this study is to provide a briefoverview 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 formwhich has to do with (i) tense marking, (ii) subject agreement, and (iii) the ability of theform to be used exclusively or predominantly in independent ⁄main contexts. Languagesthat exhibit finiteness opposition in this sense are termed ‘deranking languages’ in Stassen(1985:76–83), ‘extreme nominalizing (embedding) languages’ in Givon (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 markedas such is very rare. In many languages some verbal forms are reserved for subordination,but others occur both in main and subordinate clauses.

Language and Linguistics Compass 4/12 (2010): 1176–1189, 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2010.00253.x

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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 modifyingrelative clauses) and display adjectival properties. As Haspelmath (1994:167) notes, theyoften 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 aparticiple’. Converbs are defined by Nedjalkov and Nedjalkov (1987) and Nedjalkov(1995) as non-finite forms used primarily in adverbial functions. They usually originateeither as adpositional ⁄ case forms of verbal nouns that have become independent of theiroriginal 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 incomplement or adverbial clauses (Comrie 1976; Koptjevskaja-Tamm 1993); however,they may show inflectional properties and ⁄or combinability with adpositions typical ofnouns. This reflects the fact that action nominals often originate as deverbal nouns andonly 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 structurebecause of their inherent dual nature: as they are formed on verbal bases, they are opento 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, adjectiveor adverb, on the other. This follows from their historical origin as deverbal nouns. Thequestion is then which verbal categories are absent in non-finite forms compared to thefinite 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. Butthere are significant variations as to which of these categories is crucial for the finitenessopposition. 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 subjectmarking. 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 isnot 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-Europeanlanguages exhibit both tense and agreement on verbal forms which occur exclusively inembedded contexts. In Tundra Nenets, participles and action nominals inflect both for(relative) tense and agreement (Salminen 1997). Another example is so-called ‘dependentmoods’ as represented in West Greenlandic (Fortescue 1984) or Abkhaz (Hewitt 1979),where dependent-only forms are fully inflected. Further complications arise becauseneither tense nor agreement is a universal category, so whichever is chosen will be absentin a number of languages. If agreement is taken to be the relevant category, languageslike Japanese lack finiteness altogether. If tense is the decisive feature, the finite ⁄non-finiteopposition appears to be absent in languages like Lango, where verbs do not inflect fortense (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 independentclauses, tend to lack modal distinctions. Tundra Nenets, for instance, exhibits 16 inflec-tionally expressed and paradigmatically opposed moods on independent verbs (imperative,

Typology of Finiteness 1177

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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 evidentialsthere often are considerable restrictions on their usage in dependent clauses. NorthernKhanty exhibits the contrast between direct and indirect evidential in the past and present(Nikolaeva 1999). This contrast is signalled in main ⁄ independent clauses but neutralizedin 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 ⁄dependentasymmetry and are therefore instances of finite marking. For example, the Japaneseaddressee 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 ofcomplement clause. Similar facts are observed in Korean (Sohn 1994:355).

Another morphological criterion may be switch-reference marking on the dependentverb, which indicates coreferentiality with a core argument of another clause or the lack ofthereof. Verbal forms analysed as fully finite do not normally host switch reference, butmedial verbs in clause-chaining structures do, as for instance in Amele (Roberts 1988).

(1) a. Ho busale-ce-b dana age qo-ig-apig run.out-DS(SEQ)-3SG man PL hit-3PL-REC.PSTThe 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.PSTd-ugi-naknow-1SG-PRSI know that the men killed my pig.

Unlike the subordinate clause in (1b), the medial clause in (1a) hosts the different-subjectmarker -ce-, which indicates that its subject is referentially different from the main clausesubject. In addition, it only expresses relative (sequential) tense. Roberts classifies suchverbal forms as non-finite.

There are, however, problems with the traditional definition of finiteness as a propertyof the verb. The same form may have different inflections in different syntactic contexts.For instance, Nikolaeva (2007a) shows that, in Northern Khanty action, nominals inflectfor agreement when they head complement and adverbial clauses, but not when theyhead 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 Vietnamesewhere the verb never inflects, or languages like Slave where the same inflected form isused in all syntactic contexts and subordination is indicated by position alone (Rice1989). 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 dependentpredicates. Even ‘well-behaved’ European infinitives may occur in root contexts wherethey express various illocutionary meanings such as directive, deliberative, interrogativeor 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 bein conflict.

These facts are well-known and have led typologists to doubt the universality of thefinite ⁄non-finite distinction defined as a strict opposition between a finite (inflected and

1178 Irina Nikolaeva


independently used) and a non-finite (uninflected dependent) verb. The problem wasaddressed in various places starting from Joseph (1983), see Noonan (1985), Palmer(1986), Koptjevskaja-Tamm (1993, 1994) and Vincent (1998), as well as more recentsurveys in Nikolaeva (2007a,b) 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 ofstudies 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 definednon-finiteness is a matter of reduced expression, when some elements are omitted andsome morphological contrasts are not available. Canonical finite clauses express morefeatural distinctions on the verb than non-finite clauses. It is commonly agreed that thereduction of finiteness signals thematic dependence on the textual context. Dependentclauses 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; Givon1990; Hengeveld 1998; Cristofaro 2003). The value of the missing features is providedclause-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 bymany functional typologists, which disfavour the redundant expression of grammaticalmeanings (Haiman 1985; Croft 1991; Bybee 1994; Givon 2001). On the other hand, inmain predications, tense and participants are established independently.

This asymmetry is said to be relevant for finiteness but many typologists maintain thatfiniteness 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 asto 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).

Givon (1990:Ch. 19, 2001:Ch. 18, and other works) argues that semantic integrationinto 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 mainclause’. 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 withdeterminers, omission of verbal arguments (in particular, subjects) or their encoding aspossessors 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 canbe ‘more’ or ‘less’ finite, depending on how many features it displays that deviate fromthe prototypical main clause pattern. For instance, the English example (2a) is claimed tobe ‘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 … (Givon 2001:26)

What properties are relevant for downgrading is a language-particular matter, so thedegree to which the non-finite (nominalized) clause differs from the finite clause is a



matter of considerable cross-linguistic variation. But finiteness is still a universally validcategory encompassing any property that involves deviation from the independent clausepattern. Givon (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 categorywhich can be defined through a number of formal properties. Cristofaro (2007) speculatesthat finiteness is essentially an epiphenomenon and not a part of speakers’ linguistic knowl-edge. Subordinate clauses show various degrees of conformance to the independent clausalpattern. But since different criteria must be used for different languages, there is no reason toassume that they instantiate the same grammatical category. Instead, finiteness should beviewed as the realization of a cross-linguistic tendency for certain parameters to correlatewith each other, motivated in terms of functional principles. This conclusion standsin accordance with the popular idea that grammatical categories are construction- andlanguage-specific, whereas the universals of grammar are manifested in a number ofcorrespondence 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. Forexample, the absence of person agreement on the verb or the encoding of the dependentsubject as the possessor entails the absence of TAM distinctions or their expression bymeans of special forms. This generalization is expressed in the following format: ‘Personagreement not expressed fi TAM not expressed � special TAM forms’. Incompatibilitywith 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 uninflectedinfinitive and cannot have its own subject (3a), and in Tamil action nominals, which takean overt subject but show no agreement (3b).

(3) a. Mai Tur sakdaa aaI walk able.PRS.M amI can walk. (Bhatia 1993:263)

b. siita kaalayile va-nt-atuSita morning.LOC come-PST-ANSita’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 semanticrelationship between the main and dependent clauses.

Both Givon’s and Cristofaro’s approaches involve scales based on hierarchically orga-nized properties which are measured against each other. Scales suggest the implicationalrelations of the type ‘if A then B’. This is also true of Vincent (1998), who suggests thattense ⁄mood ⁄ agreement morphology, dependent ⁄ independent status and compatibilitywith an overt (non-oblique) subject are logically independent parameters, but thereappears to be an implicational interaction between them. In particular, for all languages, ifperson and ⁄or number and ⁄or tense are marked on the dependent forms, then they arealso marked on the independent forms (Vincent 1998:147, 151).

However, parameters crucially implicated in the definition of finiteness appear not tostand in exceptionless implicational relations. Cristofaro herself notices that correlationsdo have exceptions because various features do not always come together as predicted bythe theory. In Turkish the same matrix verbs that take fully finite embeddings allow forcomplements which lack agreement and whose subjects stand in the accusative (Kornfilt



2007). But there is no difference in terms of tense, so this is a violation of the suggestedimplication.

(4) a. [Sen-i sınav-ı gec-ecek] san-ıyor-um.you-ACC test-ACC pass-FUT believe-PRS-SG

I believe you will pass the test.b. [Sen sınav-ı gec-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 independent contexts express more agreement features than independent forms. According toGruzdeva (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-citlogo-IND go-IND-PL go-REALI ⁄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-rorkill-CVB.1SG kill-CVB.3SGafter 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 Sumbatova2007:203). Nivkh and Icari Dargwa then violate Vincent’s implication and Givon’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 inindependent 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 distinctiondepends 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 forcedto 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 asymmetriesbetween main ⁄ independent and dependent clauses. An asymmetry arises if a cognitivedomain that is obligatorily expressed in an independent clause cannot occur at all or canonly occur with a reduced set of subcategories in a dependent clause. Asymmetries of thiskind are far from being universal. As mentioned above, balancing languages like Chineseor Vietnamese have no obligatory inflectional categories and there are languages with richverbal morphology that do not show asymmetry. The notion of finiteness is only relevantfor deranking languages, which demonstrate a morphological asymmetry betweenindependent 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 marksstructural independence at the highest level of sentencehood. It is discrete but notuniversal, neither in the sense of individual grammatical categories that are used for its



expression nor in the sense that it must be marked in every language. From a cognitiveperspective, it can be viewed as a device which helps the human parser to recognizesentences as maximal syntactic units.

There is one important proviso here. In both ‘scalar’ and ‘binary’ functional approachesdiscussed in this section finiteness has to do with subordination. But the same tendenciesare observed in non-subordinated clauses with a sequential function which stand in themedial position in narratives. Carlson (1992) shows that in a number of African languagessuch clauses employ non-finite forms and explains this in terms of thematic continuityand the high degree of coherence with the previous discourse. The same is true ofco-subordination as found in clause-chaining Papuan languages (Haiman 1980; Foley andVan 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 (2007c) presents abundant typological evidence that imperatives and hortativestend to have reduced inflection and co-occurrence with overt subjects, even though theyare limited to main ⁄ independent clause and should perhaps be analysed as non-finite.Some grammars, for instance, Holes (1990:204) for Gulf Arabic, explicitly subsumeimperatives under non-finites (together with participles and action nominals). In manysyntactic 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 maybe 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 typologicalwork.

Givon’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 betweensentence-like (s-like) complements and non-s-like complements. In s-like complementsthe predicate has the same syntactic relation to its subject and other arguments that it hasin the main clause, and all arguments are encoded by means of the regular case and ⁄oradposition and agreement. For instance, embedded indicatives are balanced s-like comple-ments, whereas embedded subjunctives are deranked s-like complements. In languageswithout agreement action nominals tend to be fully s-like, as is the case in Korean andMalayalam. In other languages, dependent constructions are not fully s-like in that theylack typical verbal agreement. For instance, in Tundra Nenets, the finite 1SG verb bearsthe inflection -d�m (7a), while the dependent action nominal bears the 1SG -w� bor-rowed from the possessive paradigm (7b). Therefore the latter is not fully s-like

(7) a. m en’� xub�ta-x�na to�-d�mI morning-LOC come-1SGI came in the morning.

b. m en’� xub�ta-x�na to-qma-w�I morning-LOC come-AN-1SG.POSSmy coming in the morning



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 embeddingsin 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 theverb. The notion of clause being finite embraces various parameters depending on theexact 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 therules 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 ofthe subject is only one of the relevant parameters, but finiteness cannot be establishedbased on one criterion as a matter of principle.

To take just one example, in (8a) from Russian, the dependent clause is an embeddedindicative which contains the nominative subject and expresses the present tense and sub-ject agreement in person and number. The dependent subject prevents the main subjectPetja 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 beexpressed 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 himselfPetyai says that Vanyaj likes himselfj ⁄ *i.

b. Petja xochet ljubit’ sebja.Petyai wants to.like himselfiPetyai wants to like himselfi.

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 en’� ‘I’behaves like an independent subject in all respects. The question is then which feature isresponsible for the formation of opaque domains.

Since, in this syntactic tradition, grammatical categories can only be defined if theyoccupy a place in the hierarchical phrase structure, finiteness has a structural corollary: itcorresponds to a position (or a feature) on a tree from which it dominates most of theclause. The idea that finiteness somehow represents the whole clause was implementedby 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 atensed domain where the independent ⁄ absolute tense is realized morphologically, while anon-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 linkedwith finiteness (Chomsky 1981, 1986; Raposo 1987; others). Indeed in many Europeanlanguages, a strong correlation appears to exist between the tensed predicate and thenominative 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 togeneral principles of grammar. The basic idea behind this association is that the finite



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-externalfactors, i.e. independent from the syntactic context with respect to its temporal semanticsand 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 inthe 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. Inparticular, for the purpose of binding principles the relevant domain is the matrix clauserather than the embedded clause. Note that the verbal form is also different: in (4b), theembedded predicate bears subject agreement and, in (4a), agreement is absent. Kornfiltconcludes that in Turkish the factor that creates a finite domain is agreement rather thantense. The connection between the nominative and agreement appears in the MinimalistProgram, where they are claimed to be two manifestations of the AGREE relation.

There are numerous discrepancies between morphology and syntax, which indicatesthat syntactic opacity and ‘morphological’ finiteness may be independent. Welsh (Taller-man 1998), Maltese and languages with the so-called Balkan Infinitive (Vincent1998:151) have a finite ⁄non-finite distinction in the syntactic sense, but it is not reflectedin the morphology. For instance, in Modern Greek (Felix 1989; Anderson 2001) someclauses with fully inflected subjunctives are syntactically transparent. A number of lan-guages without inflectional morphology seem to exhibit familiar syntactic effects andtherefore have a structural distinction equivalent to that of finite ⁄non-finite. Thus, inKhmer 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) caN t ew psaa]Sina say that he want go marketSinai said that hei wants to go to the market ⁄Sinai said that hej wants to go tothe market.

b. Sina caN [(*wi) t ew psaa]Sina want he go marketSina 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 clausalunit that licences a subject. This is not reflected in morphology, as both types are basedon 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 mirrorall structural distinctions. Ledgeway (2007) shows that the loss of person marking in Nea-politan infinitives observed by the second half of the 17th century has had no effect onsyntax. On the contrary, Southern Calabrian clauses headed by the complementizer MODO

have been decategorialized from syntactically finite to non-finite, despite exhibiting noloss in the morphological realization of finiteness.

More recent versions of generative syntax have given up the strong isomorphismbetween syntactic structure and morphology and maintain that clausal finiteness correlateswith tense and agreement inflection on a language-particular basis. Finiteness is interpretedas an abstract syntactic category, whose function is to regulate the syntactic distribution of



NPs, rather than the morphological features overtly realized on the verb, whereas varioustypological patterns of inflectional marking are explained by head-movement operationsavailable 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 withthe 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 thechoice of a complementizer correlates with the finiteness of the clause it introduces andthat inflectional categories can be spelled out at C. For instance, in Irish the C-domainexpresses 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) andother work, syntactically opaque (finite) clauses are full CPs, which select for a TP ⁄ IPpositively specified for tense, whereas syntactically transparent (non-finite) clauses aredefective tenseless IPs ⁄TPs. In Rizzi’s (1997) ‘cartographic’ system finiteness is structurallyindependent of tense and located at the highest sentential level (CP rather than IP), seealso Adger (2007). It is still contributed by only one functional head (Fin�), which selectsa finite or non-finite INFL. The finite INFL in its turn has been split up into more andmore 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 andsemantic? 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. Accordingto Roussou (2001), the role of Fin� is quantification over time intervals and possibleworlds and providing an anchoring point to the speech time. In this sense finiteness iscontext-dependent and belongs together with deixis. If this is true, the finite ⁄non-finitenature of a complement is basically determined by its semantics, i.e. by the selectingpredicate 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 referredto 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 wasexplored 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 descriptivepropositional content of the utterance to its topic part. As such, it comprises at least twomeaningful components: the assertive component and the tense component. The formerindicates 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.



The expression of assertion and tense are usually associated with the finite verb. This canbe seen in English The book WAS on the table: the prosodically prominent auxiliary carriesboth a positive assertion (in contrast to The book was not on the table) and a temporalmeaning (in contrast to The book is on the table). As we saw above, in deranking languagesnon-finite verbal forms are usually employed in subordinate clauses, which rarely carryindependent 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 inprinciple 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 andSlavic, cf. the following examples from French and Latin:

(10) a. Et lui de rire.And he started laughing.

b. Tum redire paulatim amor obsequiithen return.INF little.by.little love.NOM obedience.GEN.SGThen 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 hasassertive force and requires a referentially independent subject exhibiting the usual arrayof subject properties (see Nikolaeva 2007c, for a discussion). Similarly, Swedish hasclauses that are truly finite from the semantic point of view but lack a finite form (Sells2007). The auxiliary ha which encodes the information about force and tense can bedeleted in the presence of the modal words kanske and manne ‘maybe’ located in the V2position. Sells suggests that in such cases even though there is no tensed verb, a hearercould 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 theabsence of finite morphology. The opposite case can be illustrated by fully inflectedexclamations, such as the following Russian construction:

(11) Ctob ty sdox!COMP you(M) die.PST.SG.MWould that you die!

This example has a regular subject and finite morphology, but crucially lacks semanticfiniteness: it is not assertive but rather intended as a direct expressions of wish. In fact, theverbal tense is not deictic here and does not express actual temporal anchoring. The tenseis determined by the complementizer and in this sense it is ‘fake’, just as embedded tensedsubjunctives in Balkan languages. Another example of fake tense in a dependent clause isthe so-called pseudo-relative construction in Italian (Barron 2000). The verb in thepseudo-relative appears to be tensed, but has no temporal reference on its own. If the mainverb is in the present, then the verb of the pseudo-relative is in the present, too; if themain 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 pizzaLeo saw Clio eating the pizza



So pseudo-relatives have no independent temporal interpretation but are morphologicallytensed, have subjects and express subject agreement. They provide additional evidenceagainst the argument that finiteness simply has to do with a positive specification of tenseand 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 functionalsides 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 andfor 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 Linguisticsfrom the University of Leiden in 1998. She has taught at the Linguistics Departments ofthe 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. Shehas published several books on Uralic, Altaic and Palaeosiberian linguistics based onextensive 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, Department of Linguistics, SOAS, University of London, ThornhaughStreet, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

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