Predicting syntactic distribution from morphological structure: The PP syntax of converb clauses in Uralic and Turkic

Abstract This paper deals with converb clauses in Uralic and Turkic languages. These clauses are often defined in the typological literature as featuring a special non-finite verb type. The Uralic and Turkic data show, however, that many of the alleged converbs are in fact morphologically decomposable into a non-finite verb (nominalization, participle, etc.) and a case suffix. For these clauses, I put forward an analysis couched in a generative syntactic framework. I propose that we are dealing with a postpositional phrase (PP), in which the morphologically bound P head (the case suffix) select a non-finite clause. The PP analysis is supported by two case studies. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that this analysis makes correct predictions about the syntactic distribution of these clauses. The present proposal has thus bearing on what counts as a converb cross-linguistically.