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In:Theoretical Issues in the Languages of the Caucasus
Edited by Ümit Atlamaz, Ömer Demirok and Balkız Öztürk
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 294] 2026
► pp. 212–236

Chapter 7
Participles, auxiliaries and the insertion approaches to verbal periphrasis

 | HSE University
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
In many languages, forms traditionally characterised as nonfinite (participles, infinitives, converbs and gerunds/nominalisations) can either head a clausal constituent of their own or occur inside a periphrastic TAM-construction. Existing theoretical approaches to the morphosyntax of such elements postulate a range of mechanisms — both narrow-syntactic such as head movement and post-syntactic such as structure removal, impoverishment, underspecification or fusion — to enable the insertion of an identical form into two distinct syntactic structures. Using participles in Avar (East Caucasian) as a test case, I review two main groups of approaches to verbal periphrasis and propose a tentative analysis.
Article outline
  • 1.Background
  • 2.The Avar progressive is different from English and Bantu
    • 2.1Avar participial relatives are CPs
    • 2.2Avar participles: Summary
    • 2.3Explananda
  • 3.Analysis
    • 3.1The Avar clause
    • 3.2The periphrastic progressive
    • 3.3The negation restriction
      • Tense-conditioned allomorphy in negation
    • 3.4The three explananda: Summary
  • 4.Conclusions and outlook
  • Author queries
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
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