Converb

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With the term converb (Engl. Converb ) is called in linguistics specialized adverbial verb forms .

Example from Turkish :

Gülerek gitti. " Laughing was he / she." (Converb to gülmek "laugh")

They are not finite and also do not act as a supplement to the finite main verb (i.e. they are not verbal nouns ) nor as a more detailed definition of a noun ( i.e. they are not an attribute ).

As can be seen from the example, in the German translation, conversions can often be represented by free participles (“laughing”). (In contrast to the German participle, however, converbs are specialized verb forms that are not used as attributes ).

Languages ​​with Converbs

There are also a number of other types of conversions in Turkish. Further examples of conversions can be found in most of the Turkic languages , in the Mongolian (such as Mongolian ), in the Tungusic and Uralic languages (such as Marian , Udmurt , Kamassian and Matorian ), but also in the Ethiosemitic , Omotic and Cushitic languages ​​of Africa . To a certain extent, these types of conversions or periphrastic structures can also be found in Romance and Slavic languages ​​as well as in many other languages ​​of the world, but mainly in languages ​​with the basic word order subject-object-verb (SOV).

Syntax of the Converbs

Converbs are usually subordinate to a main verb (similar to a subordinate clause ). Above all gerunds , but also participles can be counted here. They are typically identified by suffixes (such as -erek in the example above). In certain languages but converbs can not coordinate still be subordinate (s. Kosubordination ). Converbs may, in particular for the purpose of the set link (engl. Clause chaining / clause linking ) may be used, wherein a number of such verb forms consecutively occurs and through a finite verb is completed.

More terms

Other terms for types of conversions are gerund (ium) , medial verb , adverbial participle , absolute construction (for Romance languages), gérondif (for French), conjunctive / absolutive participle (for South Asian languages) and деепричастие / deepričastie (for Russian and languages ​​of the Caucasus, North and Central Asia).

Origin of the terms

The term converb comes from Altaic studies and was first used by Ramstedt (1903) (Haspelmath 1995). The term medial verb comes from the description of Asian languages, in which the converb is always in the middle position because of the typical SOV position.

literature

  • Martin Haspelmath u. Ekkehard König (Ed.): Converbs in Cross-Linguistic Perspective . Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin a. New York 1995.
  • Helmut Glück (Ed.): Metzler Lexicon Language . Metzler, Stuttgart a. Weimar 1993.