Open AccessFiniteness in South Slavic Complement Clauses
Author(s) -
Susi Wurmbrand,
Iva Kovač,
Magdalena Lohninger,
Caroline Pajančič,
Neda Todorović
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
linguistica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.134
H-Index - 1
eISSN - 2350-420X
pISSN - 0024-3922
DOI - 10.4312/linguistica.60.1.119-137
Subject(s) - hierarchy , slavic languages , linguistics , complement (music) , variation (astronomy) , distribution (mathematics) , history , mathematics , philosophy , complementation , physics , political science , mathematical analysis , biochemistry , chemistry , astrophysics , law , gene , phenotype
This paper shows that the distribution of (non‑)finiteness in the South Slavic languages reflects an implicational scale along an independently attested semantic complementation hierarchy (e.g., Givón 1980). We suggest that in the South Slavic languages, finiteness is triggered by clausal agreement features associated with different syntactic heads. Building on a complexity approach to the complementation hierarchy, we propose that cross-linguistic variation in finiteness and variation across different types of complements are the result of language-specific differences in the distribution of agreement features. More broadly, we conclude that there is no (universal) semantic correlate of (non‑)finiteness and, contra cartographic approaches, that finiteness is not confined to a particular domain in the clause. Following Adger (2007), we argue that finiteness can be distributed over all clausal domains.