Insubordination in Altaic
Insubordination in Altaic

Summary/Abstract: The present article discusses historical development of participles to verbal nouns to finite verb forms in the Altaic languages. The label Altaic is used in the expanded sense, i.e. in reference to a group of languages including Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic languages. The term “insubordination” is applied to the conventionalized finite use of what morphologically appears to be a nonfinite form. The article presents comparative evidence for this diachronic process not only as a shared structural feature, but also as a systemic set of form-function matches. This evidence is taken as diagnostic of genealogical continuity.

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