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Finiteness, mood, and morphosyntax

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2007

JOHN M. ANDERSON
JOHN M. ANDERSON
Affiliation:
Methoni, Greece
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Abstract

The approach adopted here identifies finiteness with the capacity to license an independent predication. The prototypical independent predication is positive and declarative; other ‘moods’, or main-clause types, while finite, may fail to display the morphosyntactic properties associated with this prototype. These properties vary from language to language, but the recurrent core properties are verbal, since the verb is the prototypical predicator. Some constructions that occur in both main and subordinate clauses, such as the infinitival in English, differ in interpretation in these two different circumstances; this may be the only difference between finite (main-clause) and non-finite (subordinate-clause) use. This general approach is contrasted with one in which finiteness is identified with the presence of a particular set of morphosyntactic properties: such a view as the latter can be maintained, if at all, only on the basis of massive recourse to covert categories.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , March 2007 , pp. 1 - 32
Copyright
2007 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Thanks, as usual – though the debt this represents is not taken for granted – to Fran Colman, for her careful reading of a draft of this paper. Its evolution also benefited from comments by Brian Joseph. Neither of them necessarily agrees with the views put forward here. The present form of the paper benefited considerably from some acute observations of an anonymous reviewer for JL.