Participles

A Typological Study

Ksenia Shagal

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9783110764338
• eBook ISBN: 9783110629934
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The book is the first large-scale typological study of participles, based on data from more than 100 languages. Its main aim is to model the diversity of non-finite verb forms involved in adnominal modification. Participles are examined with respect to several morphological and syntactic parameters, and are shown to be a versatile cross-linguistic category. The book is of interest to language typologists and descriptive linguists.

1 Introduction

1.1 Introducing participles

This book is a typological study of participles, that is, deranked verb forms that can be employed for adnominal modification. An illustration of their use as relative clause predicates is provided in (1a) and (1b), both by Russian participial constructions and their English translations:¹

(1)	Russian (Indo-European)
	a. devočk-a	[piš-ušč-aja	pis’m-o]
	girl(F)-NOM.SG	write-PTCP.PRS.ACT-F.NOM.SG	letter(N)-ACC.SG
	‘the girl [writing a letter]’
	b. pis’m-o	[na-pisa-nn-oe	devočk-oj]
	letter(N)-NOM.SG	PFV-write-PTCP.PST.PASS-N.NOM.SG	girl(F)-INS.SG
	‘the letter [written by the girl]’

The category of participle as defined here is not universal, in the sense that not all languages have the relevant forms. Nevertheless, it is clearly cross-linguistically valid, since forms that fall under this definition have been described for numerous genealogically and geographically diverse languages. At the same time, as a consequence of such diversity, the forms referred to by this label also demonstrate a significant degree of variation.

Participles, thus, form a rather heterogeneous group. For instance, in most European languages, such as Russian, English, or Finnish, each participial form is specialized in relativizing one specific participant of the situation. To put it simply, the forms that relativize agents, as in (1a), are referred to as active participles, while the forms that relativize patients, as in (1b), are referred to as passive participles. Using the notion of orientation introduced by Lehmann (1984: 152) and later adopted by Haspelmath (1994: 153–154), we can say that participles of the European type are inherently oriented. On the other hand, in many other languages, such as Mongolic, Turkic, Nakh-Daghestanian, or Dravidian, participles can be contextually oriented, which means that one and the same form can be used to relativize several participants, e.g. the agent (2a), the patient (2b), and the location (2c):

(2)	Kalmyk (Mongolic)
	a.	[bičǝg	bič-ǯä-sǝn]	küükǝ-n
		letter	write-PROG-PTCP.PST	girl-EXT
		‘the girl who is writing a letter’
	b.	[küük-n-ä	bič-ǯä-sǝn]	bičǝg
		girl-EXT-GEN	write-PROG-PTCP.PST	letter
		‘the letter which the girl is writing’
	c.	[küük-n-ä	bičǝg	bič-ǯä-sǝn]	širä
		girl-EXT-GEN	letter	write-PROG-PTCP.PST	desk
		‘the desk at which the girl is writing a letter’

Despite this difference, inherently and contextually oriented participles share an important feature that is crucial for the definition of participles, namely they have to be deranked. In the linguistic literature, participles are commonly described as non-finite forms; this notion, however, is notoriously hard to operationalize. As has been recently shown in many typological studies, finiteness from a cross-linguistic perspective is best regarded as a gradual and multifactorial phenomenon; see Givón (2001), Cristofaro (2003, 2007), Nikolaeva (2013), and Chapter 4 of the present study for further discussion. For this reason, I choose to refer here to the distinction between deranking and balancing introduced by Stassen (1985: 76–83); see also Koptjevskaja-Tamm (1993), Cristofaro (1998, 2003), and van Lier (2009).² Dependent clause predicates that exhibit morphological or syntactic deviation from the standard of the independent clause predicate in a given language and bear some formal marking of their dependent status are referred to here as deranked, as well as the dependent clauses featuring such verb forms. In contrast, balanced verb forms are predicates of balanced dependent clauses, which structurally resemble independent clauses in the language in question. Balanced relative clauses as opposed to deranked participial ones can be illustrated by the primary relativization strategy in many European languages, where a relative clause is introduced by a relative pronoun (3a), and otherwise the structure of the clause and the form of the predicate is exactly the same as in the corresponding independent sentence (3b):

(3)	Russian (Indo-European)
	a.	devočk-a	[kotor-aja	piš-et	pis’m-o]
		girl(F)-NOM.SG	which-F.NOM.SG	write-PRS.3SG	letter(N)-ACC.SG
		‘the girl [who is writing a letter]’
	b.	Devočk-a	piš-et	pis’m-o.
		girl(F)-NOM.SG	write-PRS.3SG	letter(N)-ACC.SG
		‘The girl is writing a letter.’

The differences between participial relative clauses and regular independent clauses in a given language can take various forms, such as lack of the categorial distinctions pertaining to finite verb forms (e.g. tense, aspect, mood or person agreement), use of special categories not pertaining to finite verb forms (e.g. nominal agreement), or changes in the encoding of verbal arguments (e.g. subjects or direct objects). For instance, in Standard Russian the tense distinction in participial relative clauses is twofold (past vs. present) instead of threefold in independent clauses (past vs. present vs. future), while in Kalmyk there is no specialized present participle whatsoever, although a present tense form exists in the verb paradigm for independent clauses.³ The agent is also often expressed differently with participles when compared to finite predicates, for example by the instrumental in Russian, as in (1b),⁴ or by the genitive in Kalmyk, as in (2b) and (2c).

1.2 Goals of the study

Although participles have been studied extensively in various individual languages, so far no systematic effort has been made to list the genealogical units and geographical areas where they are especially common or at least attested. Probably the best information available on the matter is given in Haspelmath (1994: 153), but the author himself comments that his “impressionistic remarks are only meant to be suggestive, and much more comparative work needs to be done before any firm conclusions can be reached”. Therefore, the first practical goal of this book is to fill this gap and provide preliminary information on the representation of participles in the world’s languages and their geographical distribution.

The broader and the more important aim of the study is to map out the space of variation demonstrated by participles in the world’s languages. In order to do that, I investigate three major topics:

1)

As shown above, participles can differ in their relativizing capacity: an inherently oriented form only serves to relativize a specific participant or a set of participants, while a contextually oriented form can relativize different participants depending on the context. The questions for this part of the study are: What types of inherently oriented participles are attested, and what types are not? What are the limits of contextual orientation? What are possible motivations for the restrictions on participial orientation observed across languages? What kinds of paradigms...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Abbreviations and glossing conventions
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Defining participles
• 3 Participial orientation
• 4 Desententialization and nominalization
• 5 Morphological desententialization of participial relative clauses
• 6 Participant expression in participial relative clauses
• 7 Participial systems
• 8 Conclusions and further prospects
• Appendix 1. Languages investigated in the study
• Appendix 2. Properties of the languages in the core sample
• Appendix 3. Forms considered in the study
• References
• Index of subjects
• Index of languages