EKATERINA GEORGIEVA Non-finite adverbial clauses in Udmurt PhD dissertation 2018 EKATERINA GEORGIEVA Non-finite adverbial clauses in Udmurt PhD dissertation Supervisors: DR. GÉCSEG ZSUZSANNA DR. KOZMÁCS ISTVÁN University of Szeged Graduate School in Linguistics Uralic Studies PhD Programme Szeged, 2018. Contents Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................................ i Abbreviations ................................................................................................................................. iii 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Aims of the thesis ................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Data ......................................................................................................................................... 1 1.3 Theoretical background .......................................................................................................... 4 1.4 Outline of the dissertation ....................................................................................................... 5 2 The Udmurt language .................................................................................................................... 9 2.1 Genetic affiliation and sociolinguistic background ................................................................ 9 2.2 Writing system, literacy and resources ................................................................................. 17 2.3 Basic grammar ...................................................................................................................... 19 2.3.1 Nouns and noun phrases ................................................................................................. 20 2.3.2 Verbs and clause structure ............................................................................................. 27 3 Non-finite clauses in Udmurt ...................................................................................................... 36 3.1 Finiteness in the typological and generative literature ......................................................... 36 3.2 (Non-)finiteness in Udmurt ................................................................................................... 40 3.3 Non-finite verbs in Udmurt: a first approximation ............................................................... 46 3.4 Nominalizations .................................................................................................................... 48 3.5 Non-finite relative clauses .................................................................................................... 57 3.6 Non-finite argument clauses ................................................................................................. 64 3.7 Non-finite adverbial clauses ................................................................................................. 68 3.7.1 Typological overview of adverbial clauses .................................................................... 68 3.7.2 Non-finite adverbial clauses in Udmurt ......................................................................... 75 3.7.2.1 Postposition + nominalization ................................................................................. 76 3.7.2.2 Cause/Reason clauses: -(e)mi̮ ś and -(e)men ............................................................ 78 3.7.2.3 Adverbial clauses with the adverbial case (?) ......................................................... 80 3.7.2.4 The -sa-converb ....................................................................................................... 87 3.7.2.5 The -tek-converb ...................................................................................................... 89 3.7.2.6 The -ku-converb ....................................................................................................... 90 3.7.2.7 The -toź-converb ...................................................................................................... 91 3.7.2.8 The participle/converb -mon .................................................................................... 94 3.8 Interim summary: non-finite clauses in Udmurt ................................................................... 97 4 The structure of non-finite adverbial clauses in Udmurt ............................................................. 98 4.1 How many converbs are there in Udmurt? ........................................................................... 98 4.1.1 Revisiting the existing approaches to converbs in Udmurt ............................................ 98 4.1.2 The morphological make-up of converb suffixes ........................................................ 100 4.2 The internal syntax of Udmurt adverbial clauses ............................................................... 110 4.2.1 VP ................................................................................................................................. 113 4.2.2 TP ................................................................................................................................. 117 4.2.3 CP ................................................................................................................................. 129 4.3 Summary: the proposed structure ....................................................................................... 133 5 Subjects, agreement and adjunct control ................................................................................... 136 5.1 Agreement ........................................................................................................................... 136 5.2 Null and overt subjects in Udmurt non-finite adverbial clauses ......................................... 151 5.3 Control: theoretical preliminaries ....................................................................................... 159 5.4 Adjunct control in Udmurt .................................................................................................. 165 5.4.1 Applying the OC/NOC tests ......................................................................................... 172 5.4.2 NOC adjuncts ............................................................................................................... 178 5.5 Summary ............................................................................................................................. 184 6 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 186 Appendix 1 Transliteration used in this dissertation ................................................................... 190 References ................................................................................................................................... 191 Acknowledgments My Udmurt journey started in September 2009 when I attended a class and had to translate Udmurt folktales without any previous knowledge of the language and its grammar. This journey went through fieldwork (meaning: long trains, small villages, piles of questionnaires, picking berries/mushrooms, interviewing speakers, etc.), academic work and the struggle of writing a dissertation, but now it has finally come to an end. Now it’s the time to thank the people who helped me along the way. First of all, I am immensely indebted to all Udmurt speakers I have met and worked with during my fieldworks for their patience and helpfulness. There are a couple of Udmurt consultants (and more importantly, friends!) who played a special role: Ekaterina Suncova, Ekaterina Ermakova, Anna Semenova, Irina “Zangarik” Krestyaninova, Yulia Speshilova and Nelli Lopatina, тау бадӟым! During my fieldworks I received great support from the teachers and students of the Udmurt Department at the Udmurt State University, and especially from Natalia Kondratyeva, Olga Strelkova, Dmitry Efremov, Galina Lesnikova and Svetlana Shirobokova. This dissertation would not have been possible without István Kozmács, my supervisor, who made me translate those folktales back then, and Zsuzsanna Gécseg, my second supervisior, who gave valuable input on my manuscripts. My referees, Krisztina Szécsényi and Orsolya Tánczos, put an enormous amount of work into reviewing the manuscript of this dissertation. I am very grateful to them for their valuable comments and suggestions. I also thank all my colleagues from the University of Szeged and the Research Institute for Linguistics at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences who supported me while I was working on this thesis. I would like to mention a couple of them who contributed to this dissertation in various ways. I will list their names (in alphabetical order): Dékány Éva (for her suggestions on manuscripts and conference talks), Keresztes Júlia (for sending me that dissertation and proof-reading this dissertation), Marcel den Dikken (for our discussion on ellipsis), Mus Nikolett (for the pilóta-keksz-bet and everything else), Ótott-Kovács Eszter (for being my first co-author), Sipőcz Katalin (for being always helpful with the paperwork for my grant applications), Sipos Mária (for the support during the last couple of months). I am very grateful to Marianne Bakró-Nagy for inspiring me to study Finno-Ugristics