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<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px;">Dear Jeremy (if I may),</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px;">Standard Tibetan has a common phrase that means 'because' that is literally "if you ask/say what/why" (<em>gang yin zer na</em> = what + copula + say + if). Tibetan is an SOV language, but this is not a conjunction, but rather a parenthetical you use before giving a reason. The conjunction 'because' is <em>tsang</em> (origin unknown as long as I know), and is thus placed right after the verb (at the end of the subordinate clause and before the main clause).</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px;">Best,</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px;">Eric</span></p>
<p> </p>
<div>
<div>Eric Mélac </div>
<div>Maître de conférences en linguistique / Associate professor in linguistics</div>
<div>Département d'études anglophones</div>
<div>EMMA (EA 741)</div>
<div>Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3</div>
<div>https://emma.univ-montp3.fr</div>
</div>
<p>Le 09/11/2024 16:16, Jeremy Bradley via Lingtyp a écrit :</p>
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<pre>Dear all,
I am looking at the conventionalization, eventually grammaticalization
of phrases meaning something along the lines of 'if you say/ask why' as
causal conjunctions 'because', in the languages of the world. I'm
currently aware of this happening (with some variation in the exact
structuring) in:
Mari (Uralic)
Udmurt (Uralic)
Chuvash (Turkic)
Buryat (Mongolic)
Lezgian (Northeast Caucasian)
Tamil (Dravidian)
Middle Indo-Aryan (IE)
Japanese
Korean
... which all have in common that they're SOV languages; it strikes me
as plausible that this is a pattern that easily arises when an SOV
language "needs" a mechanism for a postposed causal clause. But two
things I'm curious about:
1) Does anybody know of other languages that do this, esp.
non-SOV-languages?
2) Does anybody know about any systematic research on this process?
Best,
Jeremy
--
Jeremy Bradley, Ph.D.
University of Vienna
<a href="http://www.mari-language.com">http://www.mari-language.com</a>
<a href="mailto:jeremy.moss.bradley@univie.ac.at">jeremy.moss.bradley@univie.ac.at</a>
Office address:
Institut EVSL
Abteilung Finno-Ugristik
Universität Wien
Campus AAKH, Hof 7-2
Spitalgasse 2-4
1090 Wien
AUSTRIA
Mobile: +43-664-99-31-788
Skype: jeremy.moss.bradley
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