Delineating Turkic non-finite verb forms by syntactic function

Jonathan North Washington,Francis Morton Tyers

doi:10.3765/ptu.v4i1.4587

Jonathan North Washington, Francis Morton Tyers

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3765/ptu.v4i1.4587

Copy DOI

Abstract

In this paper, we argue against the primary categories of non-finite verb used in the Turkology literature: “participle” (причастие ‹pričastije›) and “converb” (деепричастие ‹dejepričastije›). We argue that both of these terms conflate several discrete phenomena, and that they furthermore are not coherent as umbrella terms for these phenomena. Based on detailed study of the non-finite verb morphology and syntax of a wide range of Turkic languages (presented here are Turkish, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tatar, Tuvan, and Sakha), we instead propose delineation of these categories according to their morphological and syntactic properties. Specifically, we propose that more accurate categories are verbal noun, verbal adjective, verbal adverb, and infinitive. This approach has far-reaching implications to the study of syntactic phenomena in Turkic languages, including phenomena ranging from relative clauses to clause chaining.

Highlights

In the Turkology literature, non-finite verb forms are categorised as either “participles” or “converbs”
We propose instead that the morphology and syntax of many Turkic languages present a clear distinction between verbal nouns, verbal adjectives, verbal adverbs, and infinitives
Adjectives, and adverbs behave morphologically and syntactically as their eponymous category, while infinitives obligatorily pattern with and form a single predicate with an auxiliary verb. Another way of understanding these categories is that the morphology that is used to create verbal nouns, adjectives, and adverbs allows a verb phrase to project to a noun phrase head, an adjective phrase head, or directly as an adjunct to another verb phrase, respectively, while infinitives collocate with auxiliaries to form a single verb phrase projection

Summary

Introduction

In the Turkology literature, non-finite verb forms are categorised as either “participles” or “converbs” (corresponding respectively to причастие ‹pričastije› and деепричастие ‹dejepričastije› in the Turkology literature in Russian). We propose instead that the morphology and syntax of many Turkic languages present a clear distinction between verbal nouns, verbal adjectives, verbal adverbs, and infinitives.1 These non-finite forms are all inflected verb forms which maintain their internal argument structure but do not function independently as the main verb of a sentence. Non-finite verbs in a geographically and genetically diverse range of Turkic languages (Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tatar, Tuvan, Sakha, and Turkish; see section 5.2 for details) Based on this methodology, we argue that the categories “participle” and “converb” are insufficient to categorise non-finite verb forms in Turkic in that each term, as standardly used, conflates disparate morphosyntactic patterns. This paper is structured as followed: section 2 provides background on the traditional dichotomy, section 3 discusses the problem of ambiguity, section 4 overviews our proposal, section 5 explains further, providing morphological evidence from case studies, section 6 discusses phenomena related to non-finite verb forms that present challenges to our model, and section 7 concludes

Background

Conclusions