Finite and non-finite

In Budugh, a small Daghestanian language spoken in Azerbaijan, verb-stems, defined as verb forms uninflected for tense or mood, can be used either as dependent of nouns (‘participles’) and other predicates (verbal nouns or hereafter ‘masdars’, and ‘sequential converbs’) or as finite non-indicative verb forms, that is with modal use, especially in a variety of injunctive nuances. The main distinction between dependent and independent uses is prosodic: dependent verb forms adopt the prosodic features of nouns, while the same forms, if syntactically independent, share the same prosodic pattern as other indicative or more complex modal forms which are segmentally marked (suffixed) as such.

Published online: 25 November 2010
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.121.05aut