SAY-complementizers and indexical shift in Poshkart Chuvash

Abstract

Although SAY-complementizers have been extensively documented, the question of the forms used in this function and their specific properties has received less attention. The paper focuses on the complementizer tenine (an action nominalization of SAY), which is used with communicative reception verbs (‘hear’, ‘read’, etc.), in a dialect of Chuvash (Turkic). The main puzzle concerns the difference between tenine and the more general complementizer teze (the same-subject converb of SAY) with respect to the controller of shifted first person (namely, teze, but not tenine, disallows non-subject controllers). An account of this restriction based on three independent language-specific constraints is offered. An alternative account is discussed whereby tenine (and teze) are synchronically non-finite forms of SAY. The findings highlight the importance of the form of the complementizer as well as of the choice of controller for shifted 1st person in SAY-based complementation and extend the typological parameters of indexical shift.