Finiteness in Jejuan Adverbial Clauses: a Canonical Typology approach.

In this thesis, I examine morphological, syntactic and semantic finiteness prop-
erties of a selected set of converbal, adverbial clauses in Jejuan (Koreanic, South
Korea), following a Canonical Typology approach. This typological framework
relies on the construction of a so-called Canonical Ideal that is the logical con-
vergence of all criteria defining a certain concept. Thus on the basis of finiteness
criteria, I build an ideal of a canonically finite clause, which the individual prop-
erties of a particular Jejuan adverbial clause are compared to. In this way, I
situate Jejuan adverbial clauses in the typological space of Canonical Finiteness.
This ensures cross-linguistic comparability through a rigorous application of this
concept to a particular language.
Drawing on elicited and spontaneous language data, this study shows that
the finiteness properties of Jejuan adverbial clauses are not uniform, and bundle
into larger patterns only to a limited extent: one can identify a class of ‘canoni-
cally non-finite’ clauses, yet most clause types do not group into larger classes of
finiteness properties. On the one hand, no adverbial clause ever confirms with
the canonical ideal in the entirety of its properties, meaning that they are in fact
non-finite at least in some respect. On the other hand, a particular clause type
may be more canonically finite on the morphological level, yet less so on the
syntactic or semantic level, and vice versa.
As a conclusion, the findings support current tendencies in the theoretical lit-
erature which suggest that neither a binary, nor a gradual theorisation on finite-
ness provide satisfactory accounts: in fact, the Jejuan results ask for an exam-
ination under a multi-dimensional angle which allows for various mismatches
between different linguistic domains. Given this, I argue that the Canonical Ty-
pology model is a welcome framework that can capture the diversity of cross-
linguistic finiteness manifestations in a rigorous, yet multi-faceted manner, en-
abling the comparison of different languages in a principled way.