SAY-complementizers and indexical shift in Poshkart Chuvash: With emphasis on communicative reception reports

Studies in Language. 2022. Vol. 46. No. 2. P. 402–452.

Knyazev M.

Although SAY-complementizers have been extensively documented, the question of the forms used in this function and their speci c properties has received less attention. The paper focuses on the complementizer tenine (an action nominalization of SAY), which is used with communicative recep- tion verbs (‘hear’, ‘read’, etc.), in a dialect of Chuvash (Turkic). The main puzzle concerns the di erence between tenine and the more general com- plementizer teze (the same-subject converb of SAY) with respect to the con- troller of shi ed  rst person (namely, teze, but not tenine, disallows non- subject controllers). An account of this restriction based on three independent language-speci c constraints is o ered. An alternative account is discussed whereby tenine (and teze) are synchronically non- nite forms of SAY. The  ndings highlight the importance of the form of the comple- mentizer as well as of the choice of controller for shi ed 1st person in SAY- based complementation and extend the typological parameters of indexical shi .

Keywords: complementizers, Chuvash, turkic languages