Clause structure and verbal forms in Nakh-Daghestanian languages

Abstract The notion of finiteness is one of those theoretical concepts that is widely used but vaguely defined. Traditionally, finiteness has often been understood in terms of morphological categories, i.e. as the ability of a verbal form to be marked for certain morphological categories such as subject agreement in person and number, or tense (e.g. Schwyzer 1939: 639; Heidolph et al. 1981: 498). Generative grammar also accepts that finiteness of a clause correlates, although indirectly, with verbal morphology (e.g Radford 1988: 287–92; Rizzi 1997: 284; Carnie 2002: 149–51, and Kornfilt, Chapter 9 below).