Infinite Constructions with Their Own Subjects (Heteroprosopy) in Balkanic Languages

Abstract

Balkanic languages display a diversity of heteroprosopic constructions that appear with infinite clauses. They are found with infinitives, gerunds, and to a lesser degree with verbal nouns. There may be an overt subject, but more often a subject (agent) is lacking and has to be extracted from the context. While in West European languages we mainly face what is called the AcI type (‘I see him come (coming)’), in Balkanic languages we encounter another type where finite and infinite clauses are connected less closely (*,Opening the door (he), we entered‘). Constructions like this are frequent in Albanian, especially in the Gegue dialect (with infinitives, privatives, forms ‘without – ing’, gerunds, and verbal nouns), less frequently in (old) Romanian (with infinitives and gerunds), even less developed in Greek and Macedonian (with gerunds only), and nearly absent in Bulgarian. Infinitives and gerunds have the potential to substitute for a multitude of finite subordinate clauses. In North-Gegue it is possible for all of them.