Balancing and deranking

In linguistics, balancing and deranking are terms used to describe the form of verbs used in various types of subordinate clauses and also sometimes in co-ordinate constructions. A verb form is said to be balanced if it is identical to forms used in independent declarative clauses A subordinate verb form is said to be deranked if it cannot be used in independent declarative clauses Verb forms that occur in subordinate clauses of various languages that cannot occur in independent clauses are of various types, but there do exist some typical patterns that differentiate these forms from main-clause verb forms in the same language. There are verb forms that possess the same type of person and tense marking as the verb forms used in independent declarative clauses, but differ in mood. Typical examples include such forms as subjunctives and irrealis moods. In the Eskimo–Aleut languages, there are special "dependent moods" used only in subordinate clauses. There are verb forms that have the same distinctions of person, tense and aspect as are found in main-clause verbs, but which indicate them using special forms distinct from those of main clause verbs. There are verb forms that do not have the distinctions of person, tense and aspect found in main-clause verbs, such as participles. These are used for certain types of subordinate clauses in English like "Being so busy, I couldn't come home." There are verb forms that add extra morphemes never found on main clause verbs. Often these are adpositions or case suffixes. Languages that use deranking for their subordinate-clause verb forms do so according to a definite pattern. There are relatively few languages that use deranked verb forms for all subordinate clauses (examples are found amongst the Tungusic and Salishan languages), but most languages with significant verb inflection use deranking for at least some of their subordinate clauses. Exceptions can be found only amongst certain rigidly head-marking languages such as Ainu and Lakhota.