A note on Basque participles

Abstract

This paper develops and extends a unified account of two different guises of participial affixes in Basque suggested in Haddican (2007). The affixes -tu/-i/-n/-Ø are traditionally described as 'participial' affixes or perfective markers in view of the fact that on main verb complements of finite auxiliaries, they obligatorily cooccur with a perfective interpretation. Nevertheless, in non-finite embeddings, these affixes do not force perfective interpretation, and instead behave as infinitival markers. It is proposed that the affixes -tu/-i/-n/-Ø are merged as infinitival heads, and that the perfective guise of these elements involves raising of the verb root+-tu/-i/-n/-Ø to a null perfective head. Indirect evidence in favour of this proposal comes from the behaviour of these affixes in central dialects.