Postverbal phrases in Tundra Nenets: an empirical study of rigid verb finality

Abstract

Tundra Nenets is an SOV language that appears not to fully prohibit postverbal constituents. Apart from brief remarks in prior literature, the nature of these occurrences has not been examined in detail. This study offers a closer empirical investigation of postverbal phrases in Tundra Nenets, drawing on data from corpora, grammatical descriptions and our fieldwork. Given that clause-internal postposing of constituents in verb-final languages is cross-linguistically constrained by factors such as complexity, information structural status and syntactic function, we examine whether any such asymmetries are attested in Tundra Nenets. We argue that the absence of asymmetries follows if all postverbal phrases are clause-external satellites, functioning either as right dislocation or as afterthought (as conjectured by Nikolaeva 2014. A grammar of Tundra Nenets . Berlin: De Gruyter). This analysis is supported by data indicating that postverbal phrases, with the possible exception of adjuncts, are consistently associated with a preverbal correlate, either overt or covert. The clause-external satellite analysis correctly derives the choice between an overt and a null correlate from independent principles, and it also accounts for the unacceptability of the postverbal placement of non-referential manner and measure adjuncts. We conclude that Tundra Nenets falls in the relatively small group of rigidly verb-final languages.