FINITENESS CROSS-LINGUISTICALLY: VARIABLES AND INVARIABLES
Elena Kalinina
Lomonosov Moscow State University
1. The problem of finiteness as the property of a clause has direct bearing upon cognitive structures
and processes. Finite categories are employed to map the proposition onto the external world and
the context of the utterance. Hence, pervasive understanding of the way these categories work in
a particular language or in any possible language can help access and model cognitive structures
that dynamically organize information in the interactive communication processes.
2. Finiteness in the languages of Europe.
The distinction between finite and non-finite forms in the languages of Europe goes back to the Greek
grammarians. However, even with regard to these languages, the concept of finiteness is not that
straightforward. The views on the European finiteness can be summarized as folows:
1. Finiteness is the feature of a verb form. In the classical view, finite verbs are limited by person
and number; in (Klein 1998), finite forms are claimed to bear the feature AST (for “assertion”).
2. Finiteness is the clause property. According to (Huddlestone & Pullum 2002: 88-89), finiteness
should be considered as “a syntactic category of the clause, rather than as an inflectional category
of the verb...”, and the feature distinguishing finite and non-finite clauses is the presence of a
finite verb.
3. Finiteness is a semantic category. As claimed in (Barron 2000:18), finiteness has to be treated as
a semantic property to do with definite referential time and reality, but not as a morphosyntactic
feature. In (Klein 1998) finiteness is also understood as an abstract semantic operator with scope
properties.
3. Finiteness in typology.
The cross-linguistic concept of finiteness is still a matter of controversy. Cross-linguistic validity of the
distinction of finite and non-finite verbs in the classic Indo-European form has been questioned many
times. There is a general agreement among typologists that finiteness is more appropriately viewed as the
property of a clause. Under this approach, finiteness is usually described as a set of features which
embody the dependent/independent clause distinction. ((Bisang 2001), (Cristofaro 1997), (Givon 1990),
(Stassen 1985)). In (Plank 2001), this approach is generalized: the difference between dependent and
independent clauses is claimed to be a matter of contextual autonomy which shows in independent
speech-event anchoring (temporal, epistemic-attitudinal, local) and independent informational articulation
(topic-comment, > subject-predicate).
However, agreement ends when the following questions are posed:
1) What is the cross-linguistic invariable of finiteness (the dependent/independent distinction, a
particular set of grammatical features etc.) and what is subject to variability?
2) Given that we know what can vary, what is the possible range of cross-linguistic variation?
3. Configurational view of finiteness.
1) I am going to present ample cross-linguistic evidence in favour of the semantic invariable of finiteness
as anchoring speech events in time, reality and discourse context. This view is in accordance with (Klein
1998), (Plank 2001), (Barron 2002).
2) Morphosyntactic features that languages employ to make clauses finite can vary. Using two diagnostic
contexts (the context of nominal predicate sentences and the context of subordinate clauses) I will show
that cross-linguistic variation in the expression of finite categories can be captured in terms of four
parameters.
1. The set of finite categories. Cross-linguistically, it includes more possibilities than the usual set of
categories (tense, person/number, modality). In many languages, finite categories include
grammatical marking of information articulation, illocutionary force, evidentiality. For example,
in Tariana, it is only evidentiality that has to be expressed in a nominal predicate sentence to
make it finite. In many languages, temporal deixis is based on relative (rather than absolute) tense
marking.
2. Expression mode. Finite categories can be expressed in a number of ways apart from the
traditional finite verb: clitics, auxiliaries, universal morphemes, attaching to both nouns and
verbs. For instance, in Kabardian (West-Caucasian) the finite marker of relative tense is a
universal morpheme that attaches to both verbal and nominal stems.
3. The hierarchy of finite categories: the expression of one category precludes or requires the
expression of another one. In Khinalug (Dagestanian), tense does not have to be expressed in
interrogative sentences: the presence of an interrogative particle is sufficient to make a nominal
predicate sentence finite. In affirmative sentences, tense has to be expressed by an auxiliry. That
means, that in Khinalug, the category of tense is suborinate to the category of illocutionary force
in the hiearchy of finite categories: tense has to be expressed only with one of the values of this
category (affirmation) and does not have to be expressed with the other (interrogation).
4. The mode of expression can be subject to contextual variability in certain environments. In Old
Russian (Slavic), person was a finite category. So, nominal predicate sentences contained a
copular verb expressing person. In case a personal pronoun subject was present in the sentences,
the copula in nominal predicate sentences could be omitted as excessive. So, person as a finite
category was expresse in any finite clause, but under certain conditions (nominal predicate
sentences, pronominal subjects) it did not need to be expressed by the finite verb (copula).
So, cross-linguistically, finiteness is perhaps best seen as the combination of a semantic invariable and a
particular morphosyntactic configuration. It implies that we can identify categories which are central for
effecive communication and get some clues as to the way the content of thought is moulded and
transformed into an utterance.