[Lingtyp] From causal to complement markers

[Maria Kholodilova]

Dear Rodrigo,
 
Moksha Mordvin (Uralic)  mes is most likely a case in question. It is used as an intorragtive pronoun meaning ‘why’, a causal marker, and a comlement marker. As far as I know, it doesn’t have any other functions, which makes the diachronic analysis pretty straightforward. When used as a complementizer, it is almost exclusively limited to emotive predicates and the word ‘thank you’ in the matrix clause and cannot be used with the verb ‘know’ in the matrix clause.
This research is unfortunately only reflected in a chapter of a grammar written in Russian («Элементы мокшанского языка в типологическом освещении»), let me know if you need it.
 
I’ve been thinking that a similar development might have happened with the Modern Greek  που  because, according to Kisilier (2018) it is also used as a causal marker and a complementizer that tends to be used with emotive predicates. However,  που  has a lot of other functions as well.
Kisilier M. 2018.  Ότι ,  που and  πως in Standard Modern Greek: corpus-oriented research. Talk at “Balkan languages and dialects: Corpus-based and quantitative studies”. Saint Petersburg, 18–20.10.18.
 
Best regards,
 
Maria
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