[Lingtyp] 'As soon as' constructions

Randy J. LaPolla randy.lapolla at gmail.com
Sat Feb 27 04:10:39 UTC 2021


Dear Jesús,
In the Trung (Dulong) language (Sino-Tibetan; northwest Yunnan, China) there is a special pattern like that that only shows up in procedural texts. Here is a link to a collection of seven Dulong texts:

LaPolla, Randy J. 2001. Dulong texts: Seven fully analyzed narrative and procedural texts. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 24.2:1-39.
https://personal.ntu.edu.sg/randylapolla/Papers/LaPolla_2001_Dulong_texts_-_Seven_fully_analyzed_narrative_and_procedural_texts.pdf <https://personal.ntu.edu.sg/randylapolla/Papers/LaPolla_2001_Dulong_texts_-_Seven_fully_analyzed_narrative_and_procedural_texts.pdf>

Here is the description of the pattern from the collection:

The first four are procedural texts, and the last three are
traditional Dulong folk stories. In the procedural texts, a pattern of discourse
segmentation can be seen where several clauses will end in a reduplicated verb,
then will be followed by an unredupiicated verb. This has the sense of 'Do this,
this, this, and then this', or 'Having done this, and this, then do this.' The next
segment then generally begins 'Having finished .. .', repeating the last verb, and
then goes on to start another series like the one before.

Hope it is useful.

Randy
-----
Randy J. LaPolla, PhD FAHA (羅仁地)
Professor of Linguistics, with courtesy appointment in Chinese, School of Humanities 
Nanyang Technological University
HSS-03-45, 48 Nanyang Avenue | Singapore 639818
http://randylapolla.info/ <http://randylapolla.info/>
(personal.ntu.edu.sg/randylapolla <http://personal.ntu.edu.sg/randylapolla>)
Most recent books:
The Sino-Tibetan Languages, 2nd Edition (2017)
https://www.routledge.com/The-Sino-Tibetan-Languages-2nd-Edition/LaPolla-Thurgood/p/book/9781138783324 <https://www.routledge.com/The-Sino-Tibetan-Languages-2nd-Edition/LaPolla-Thurgood/p/book/9781138783324>
Sino-Tibetan Linguistics (2018)
https://www.routledge.com/Sino-Tibetan-Linguistics/LaPolla/p/book/9780415577397 <https://www.routledge.com/Sino-Tibetan-Linguistics/LaPolla/p/book/9780415577397>


> On 27 Feb 2021, at 11:15 AM, Jesus Francisco Olguin Martinez <olguinmartinez at ucsb.edu> wrote:
> 
> Dear all,
> 
> I hope this message finds you well.
> 
> In my sample, various languages express 'as soon as' by means of constructions where the verb of the subordinate clause is doubled and the second component is negated (e.g. 'having gone not having gone...'='as soon as I went...')  or constructions where the subordinate verb is followed by 'or not' ('having gone or not...'='as soon as I went...') (cf. Olguin Martinez et al 2019). This seems to be attested in:
> 
> 1. Georgian
> 2. Lezgian
> 3. Turkish
> 4. Japanese
> 
> Haspelmath (1993: 386) mentions that this construction exists in the neighboring Turkic languages. Besides Turkish, are you aware of any other Turkic languages that have a similar construction to express 'as soon as'?
> 
> With respect to verb doubling without negative markers, it seems that various languages of my sample, particularly West African languages, express this semantic relations by means of this strategy (e.g. 'arrived he arrived'..='as soon as he arrived..' (cf.  <>Lefebvre and Brousseau 2002; Fiedler 2014;  <>Olguin Martinez et al 2019)  <>. This also seems to be common is Creole languages ( <>Michaelis et al. 2013; Olguin Martinez et al 2019), among many other languages of my sample. Are you aware of any paper that has explored this phenomenon? Any languages that have this strategy to express 'as soon as' or other temporal adverbial relations? <>
> 
> Thank you very much in advance.
> 
> Best,
> -- 
> Jesús Olguín Martínez
> Ph.D. Candidate, Dept. of Linguistics
> University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)
> http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/people/jesús-olguín-martínez <http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/people/jes%C3%BAs-olgu%C3%ADn-mart%C3%ADnez>
> 
> References
> Fiedler, Ines. 2014. Why are ‘as soon as’ clauses marked for predicate-centered focus. Handout, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
> Haspelmath, Martin. 1993. A grammar of Lezgian. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
> Lefebvre, Claire & Anne-Marie Brousseau. 2002. A grammar of Fongbe. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
> Michaelis, Susanne Maria, Martin Haspelmath & the APiCS Consortium. 2013. Verb doubling in temporal Clauses. In Michaelis, Susanne Maria, Maurer, Philippe, Haspelmath, Martin & Huber, Magnus (eds.), The atlas of pidgin and creole language structures, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
> Olguin Martinez, Jesus, Bernard Comrie, and Eric W. Campbell. 2019. 'As soon as' clauses: A typological study of temporally subsequent events. Handout of talk given  at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea.
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20210227/19b2e812/attachment.htm>


More information about the Lingtyp mailing list