The Syntax of the Albanian Verb Complex

This work, first published in 1985, is an analysis of the syntax of the Albanian verb complex. The term "verb complex" is defined here as the verb stem and its conjugational endings, together with the perfect auxiliaries and verb clitics. In a wider sense the verb includes the verb and its central arguments: subject, direct object, and indirect object.

The analysis is presented in a somewhat expanded version of the relational grammar framework of Perlmutter and Postal (1977). It is argued that by assuming the existence of multiple levels in the syntactic structure of a clause, it is possible to account for the distribution of active and non-active verb forms over the various constructions of Albanian with a single generalisation. This title will be of interest to students of language and linguistics.

Philip L. Hubbard