Typology of Finiteness

The notion of finiteness inherited from the traditional grammar and based on morphological criteria has been ill defined. While some typologists doubt the universality of the finite/nonfinite distinction, others suggest that finiteness is a scalar meta‐phenomenon or a functional tendency defined by a cluster of correlating parameters. In this approach no decision is needed as to what feature is crucial for finiteness because it has different morphosyntactic manifestations across languages. The nature of finiteness has to do with the semantics of subordination (the asymmetry between dependent and independent clauses). But other research argues that the finite/nonfinite opposition is broader because it applies to independent clauses, too. The paper shows that there are different domains of grammar where the notion of finiteness may play a role. The nature of the relationship between them is to some extent arbitrary and depends on an individual language. This implies that if the universal content of this category is to be maintained, it must be decomposed. At this stage what we need is a typologically informed approach which can provide a tool for cross‐linguistic comparison and present the whole area of finiteness‐related phenomena in a structured and principled way. This is a necessary prerequisite for providing a descriptively adequate framework for further theory construction.