Converbs in Tatyshly Udmurt
Converbs in Tatyshly Udmurt

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this paper is two-fold. Firstly, I present a typological account of non-finite adjunct clauses and verbal forms that head them in Tatyshly Udmurt (FINNO-UGRIC, Russia). I describe the morphosyntactic and semantic properties of four converbs: the converb ending in -sa, a multifunctional form expressing manner, attendant circumstance and cause; its negative counterpart, the converb ending in -tek; the converb ending in -kə̑, which denotes relative present tense; and the converb ending in -č'č'ož, whose meaning is comparable to English while/until. To the best of my knowledge, there are no detailed descriptions of non-finite verbal adjuncts in Tatyshly Udmurt, while existing accounts of Standard Udmurt leave several properties relevant for typological comparison insufficiently specified. Secondly, I demonstrate how converbs expressing relative present tense can be distinguished from those denoting attendant circumstance. Although both semantic types are widely discussed in typological literature, clear diagnostics for assigning individual verb forms to one of these categories remain lacking. By applying discourse-based and syntactic criteria, I argue that these meanings represent distinct functional types in Tatyshly Udmurt rather than overlapping interpretations. The analysis is based primarily on elicited fieldwork data collected from native speakers, supplemented by corpus examples [TUC]. I follow the typological approach to converbs set out in [Haspelmath 1995; König 1995; Nedjalkov 1995].

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