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The origin and functioning of circumstantial clause linkers: a cross-linguistic study Anna Martowicz A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to Linguistic and English Language School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences The University of Edinburgh 2011 © Copyright 2011 by Anna Martowicz Declaration I herby declare that this thesis is my own composition and that it contains no materials previously submitted for the award of any other degree as well as that the work reported here has been executed by myself. I ABSTRACT The thesis analyses a variety of clause linkers used in the world’s languages as dedicated markers of four circumstantial relations between states of affairs: anteriority (‘after’), causality (‘because’), purpose (‘in order to’) and conditionality (‘if’). Focusing primarily on the function of the linkers rather than on their formal properties the study scrutinizes the origin and functioning of free-word adverbial subordinators, converbal endings as well as other subordinating affixes and polymorphemic structures specialized for clause-linking functions. The database consist of nearly 700 items which come from a geographically and genetically balanced sample of 84 languages. In the first part of the thesis I discuss in detail the scope of the study, theoretical foundations (functional approach to language analysis) and methodology. In the second part I focus on the issues of grammaticalization and semantic scope of the linkers. The analysis of patterns of polysemy of the linkers, as well as the make-up of the polymorphemic items among them provide material for the reconstruction of the most common sources and pathways of grammaticalization. Looking closer at the patterns of semantic polyfunctionality (i.e. other circumstantial meanings that the clause linkers convey in addition to being markers of the four analysed relations) I reveal the architecture of the network of their cognitive affinities. The result of this investigation is a set of findings, which add to our understanding of the origin and functioning of the markers – a topic which has received little attention so far. The third part of the dissertation is dedicated to the analysis of the cross- linguistic variation in the degree of grammaticalization, lexicalization and explicitness of the linkers and discussion on the motivations behind their development. The main body of the analyses is focused on the investigation of the potential influence of a variety of socio-cultural factors on the variations observed. The factors include those most often mentioned in the context of the forces shaping language structure: presence and vitality of written form as well as other media of displaced communication, presence of the language in schooling, population size of the speech community, and type of society. The results obtained show that the degrees of grammaticalization, lexicalization and explicitness are much stronger correlated with socio-cultural factors for anteriority and conditionality than for causality and purpose. In order to account for the differences I evoke the concepts of cognitive salience and communicative pressure arguing that the influence of socio-cultural factors on language structure should always be considered in a broader context which includes also pragmatics and cognitive psychology. II Acknowledgements Both I and this dissertation owe a lot to many wonderful people. First of all, I would like to thank Ronnie Cann for being the best supervisor a PhD student can dream of. Thank you for your wisdom, knowledge, kindness, patience, understanding and support. Thank you for allowing me to wander around the labyrinth of linguistics watching my steps at the same time and summoning me back to the right tracks on all those occasions when I was just about to enter the Dark Forests. It has been a great pleasure and a great honour to work under your wings. My sincere thanks go also to Jim Hurford and Simon Kirby – my secondary supervisors – and to the members of the Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit as well as the entire Linguistics and English Language Department at the University of Edinburgh for creating a perfect research environment in which sharing of the linguistic experience and expertise is truly part of everyday life. My PhD studies and completion of the thesis would not be possible without the generous support of the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Edinburgh who awarded me with a scholarship and studentship making the most fantastic journey of my life possible. The same concerns all the small grants that the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences awarded me throughout the years helping me to finance conference attendances and research visits abroad. Thank you for having confidence in my abilities. I wish to express also my utmost gratitude towards all those linguists with whom I exchanged within these four years over a thousand e-mails in total, and whose contribution to this thesis cannot be underestimated. In no particular order I am expressing my thanks to: Charles Morfo, Sidney da Silva Facundes, Luise Hercus, Janet Watson, Xabier Artiagoitia, Swintha Danielsen, Ross McCallum Jones, Bertil Tikkanen, Steven Jacobson , Michael Dunn, Nancy Morse, Nicky de Jong, Volker Heeschen, Ronnie Cann, Ron Looker, Mati Erelt, Mark Post, Regine Koroma, Ger Reesink, Malami Buba, Philip Jaggar, Paul Newman, Amar Singh, Akira Yamamoto, Paul Frank, Carl Rubino, Niclas Burenhult, Yuri Shinya, Kaori Miura-Dowman, Robert Pensalfini, John Hutchison, David Solnit, Andrey Nefedov, Christa Kilian-Hatz, Ongaye Oda, Alain Kihm, Angela Terrill, Heleen Plaisier, Aone van Engelenhoven, Jan van Eijk, Wenshan Li, Gilles Gravelle, George Huttar, Noel Rude, Marie Lucie Tarpent, Ekaterina Gruzdeva, Chao-Lin Li, Chunming, Maciej Grochowski, David III Weber, Colette Grinevald, Clay Strom, Elizabeth Zeitoun, Christina Thornell, Madhusudan Mishra, Paul Sidwell, Arthur Holmer, Stephen Marlett, Zouhir Gabsi, Thomas Willett, Assibi Amidu, Bhuvana Narasimhan, Vipas Pothipath, Shoichi Iwasaki, René van den Berg, Rachel Nordlinger, Victoria Rau, John Bradley, William Foley, Jane Simpson All of you have taught me more than I could have imagined – not only about the less and more exotic languages but also about the art of linguistics and fieldwork. Thank you for your time, kindness, patience and for your interest in my study. I hope that in the future I will have many occasions to share with others what I have learned from you – at both professional and personal level. My thanks go also to the Linguistic Department at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig for making my three research stays in the Institute: in November 2007, September-October 2008 and March-April 2009 such a wonderful experience. I am grateful to Bernard Comrie, Martin Haspelmath, David Gil and Juliette Blevins for finding time to share with me their thoughts on my research and linguistics in general and for all the useful comments I received from them. I will not forget about the staff of the Institute’s library who were always ready to help me during the hundreds of hours that I spent among their collections and about Julia Cissewski for her help in organizing the research stays. Ron Looker – thank you for proofreading of this thesis and for all the discussions we had about English and Polish in the last two years. Finally, I wish to thank my husband and my daughter, my mum, my sisters, and parents-in-law for their constant support and encouragement throughout these years. You’ve been wonderful. IV CONTENTS Glossing conventions and abbreviations XI INTRODUCTION 1 PART I Scope of the study, theoretical premises and methodology 7 CHAPTER 1 Circumstantial relations between clauses 9 1.1. The notion of state of affairs and clause 9 1.2. Relations between states of affairs and relations between clauses 10 1.3. Classifications of circumstantial clauses 12 1.4. The focus of the study 14 1.4.1. Anteriority 15 1.4.2. Causality 16 1.4.3. Purpose 16 1.4.4. Conditionality 17 1.5. Strategies of encoding of circumstantial relations 18 1.5.1. Problems in defining subordination 19 1.5.2. Overview of the strategies 21 1.5.3. Thompson and Longacre’s overview of strategies 28 1.5.4. Towards a unified, function-based classification 30 1.6. Summary 34 CHAPTER 2 Theoretical foundations and methodology 35 2.1. Theoretical foundations and approach to the analysed domain 35 2.1.1. Function-based definition of the studied subject 35 2.1.2. Instruments of analysis and explanatory apparatus 37 2.2. Language sample 40 2.3. Data collection 44 2.3.1. The database 44 2.3.2 .Source 1: published materials 46 2.3.3. Source 2: the questionnaire 47 2.4. Summary 48 PART II Sources and semantic scope of c-glossemes 51 CHAPTER 3 Background and parameters of analysis 54 3.1. Forms and morphological complexity of c-glossemes 54 3.2. Insight into the origin of c-glossemes 57 3.2.1. Grammaticalization and its mechanisms 58 V 3.2.2.