Converb

In theoretical linguistics, a converb is a non-finite verb form that serves to express adverbial subordination, i.e. notions like 'when', 'because', 'after', 'while'.

Converbs are differentiated from coverbs, which are verbs in complex predicates in languages that have serial verb construction.

Converbs can be observed in Turkic and Mongolian languages, especially Mongolian.

Etymology

The term converb was coined for Mongolian by Ramstedt (1903) and until recently was mostly used by specialists of Mongolic and Turkic languages to describe non-finite verbs that could be used either for coordination or subordination. Nedjalkov & Nedjalkov (1987) first adopted the term for general typological use, followed by Haspelmath & König (1995). Other terms that have been used to refer to converbs include adverbial participle, conjunctive participle, gerund, gerundive and verbal adverb (Ylikoski 2003).

Description

A converb depends syntactically on another verb form, but is not its argument. It can be an adjunct, i.e. an adverbial, but can neither be the only predicate of a simple sentence, nor clausal argument (i.e. it cannot depend on predicates such as ‘order’ etc.) (Nedjalkov 1995: 97).