Participles and Finiteness: The Case of Akhvakh

Abstract

In Akhvakh, a Nakh-Daghestanian language belonging to the Andic branch of the AvarAndic-Tsezic family , dependent clauses may involve subordination mechanisms of types commonly applied to clauses headed by independent verb forms, or the use of strictly dependent verb forms (infinitive and converbs). But Akhvakh also has verb forms that question the notion of finiteness by being used both as heads of typical participial relative clauses, and as independent verb forms. On the other hand, there is no correlation between the morphological characteristics of Akhvakh verb forms (in particular with respect to argument indexation) and their ability to head independent clauses. In order to eliminate the inconsistencies following from the use of current terminology in the description of Akhvakh verb inflection, the idea of a necessary correlation between the morphological characteristics and the syntactic abilities of verb forms must be abandoned, and the definition of the type participle must be reformulated in a way making it logically independent from the type non-finite verb form. This means that the negative conditions implied by the notion of non finiteness as it is currently understood must be eliminated from the definition of participle, and participles must be defined exclusively with reference to their ability to occur in constructions constituting a particular type of relativization strategy, in which they behave at the same time as verbal heads and as adjectival dependents of a head noun.