Subordination and Sentence Connectives in Old Hittite (LINCOM Studies in Indo-European Linguistics 49)

Old Hittite sentence connectives nu, ta and šu display a significantly different distribution when connecting a preposed subordinate clause to the main clause with respect to their distribution between main clauses. Other distributional restrictions concern ta and šu in all syntactic environments, but do not concern nu. The discourse function of connectives when they occur between main clauses points to partly different roles by which they variously indicate event and/or participant continuity, and contribute to the grounding of information. Ongoing increase in the frequency of P2 clitics also called for the occurrence of connectives as hosts. Lack of distributional restrictions on the occurrence of nu made it multifunctional, and suitable as a host for P2 clitics while preserving at least in part its original discourse function: this brought about the onset of a change by which nu replaced other connectives. The discourse function of connectives is blurred between a subordinate and a main clause, as subordinate clauses explicitly indicate their relation to the main clause. Due to its multi-functionality, nu also extended more readily to this syntactic environment, in which it developed into a boundary marker. Uneven distribution of connectives in different syntactic environments is a consequence of gradualness in actualization of languages change.

Old Hittite sentence connectives nu, ta and šu display a significantly different distribution when connecting a preposed subordinate clause to the main clause with respect to their distribution between main clauses. Other distributional restrictions concern ta and šu in all syntactic environments, but do not concern nu. The discourse function of connectives when they occur between main clauses points to partly different roles by which they variously indicate event and/or participant continuity, and contribute to the grounding of information. Ongoing increase in the frequency of P2 clitics also called for the occurrence of connectives as hosts. Lack of distributional restrictions on the occurrence of nu made it multifunctional, and suitable as a host for P2 clitics while preserving at least in part its original discourse function: this brought about the onset of a change by which nu replaced other connectives. The discourse function of connectives is blurred between a subordinate and a main clause, as subordinate clauses explicitly indicate their relation to the main clause. For this reason, nu extended more readily to this syntactic environment. Uneven distribution of connectives in different syntactic environments is a consequence of gradualness in actualization of languages change.

This paper presents a corpus-based cross-linguistic examination of one aspect of the overt expression of causality, comparing and contrasting the uses of six conjuncts of result in two languages. The actual lexemes in the study are English so, therefore, and thus, together with Norwegian så, derfor, and således. Using data from the English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus, profiles for each of the six conjuncts are first developed on the basis of semantic, syntactic, and discourse features. The three pairs of expressions are then contrasted cross-linguistically in order to discover how these words differ from one another in their usage. The semantic analysis is based upon the idea of a scale of speaker involvement which has been developed by several researchers who have contrasted causal connectives in Dutch, French, and German. Bernd Kortmann’s scale of informativeness (1991) also provides the framework for an examination of the variation in interpretation of the six lexemes. The syntactic analysis primarily involves an examination of sentence positioning, and the discourse analysis looks into both overall frequency as well as distribution in the categories of fiction and non-fiction. The translations of the six conjuncts are then examined to discover what happens to them in the translation process.

The present contribution surveys prominent patterns in the typology of relative and adverbial clauses, with particular reference to the notion of embedding. To this end, we unfold the notion of embedding into a three-dimensional space consisting of a functional, a distributional and a formal axis along which a clause may be argued to be embedded into a (constituent of a) main clause. We show how these dimensions of embedding interact with each other to yield cross-linguistically recurrent subtypes of relative and adverbial clauses. In doing so, we also point to correlations between these dimensions and other grammatical properties of the non-argument clause, such as accessibility to relativization or the omissibility of overt markers of the embedding relationship.

The manuscript applies the method of building and analyzing a semantic map to the grammatical category of adverbial clauses, more specifically to adverbial clauses of concession. The category of concession and its markers are described in detail and the different semantic-pragmatic functions of concession that are inherent to the category are developed based on the descriptions. These functions are then arranged in a network, the conceptual space of adverbial concession. In a last step, the concessive conjunctions of four sample languages will be distributed on the map. The sample of languages is restricted to English, German, French and Latin. Although they are all European languages, they belong to different branches of this language family. The emphasis of the analysis is on English and German. French and Latin function as complementary sources and lead to a balanced sample. Due to the genetic affiliation between German and English, I expect close similarities in the distribution of the markers on the conceptual space. As Latin is the ancestor of Romance languages, I expect a diachronic development from Latin concessive conjunctions to French markers. By comparison, the distributions of the concessive conjunctions on the conceptual space will exhibit similarities and differences. Thus, it will reveal cross-linguistic tendencies both in the synchronic prototypicality and in the diachronic development of the functions. It is the aim of the paper to develop a functional network of adverbial concession on the basis of the semantic map approach. Therefore, I will derive the necessary functions of concession in order to be able to build the semantic map of the category. Then I will analyse the semantic map in order to demonstrate that there are universal aspects and tendencies within the category of concession across languages. Thus, I will investigate if there is a prototypical, universal function of concession and compare the morphosyntactics of concessive markers as well as their semantic ranges. Eventually, I will derive diachronic, possibly universal mechanisms of how concessive semantics develop in the adverbial concessive category.