[Lingtyp] IF and WHEN in the future

[Joey Lovestrand]

Hi Sergey - As others could attest, the same morpheme used in clauses that
might be translated either 'if' or 'when' is common in African languages.
For example, in an introduction to a volume on conditional clauses in
African languages, Nicolle (2017:8)
<https://journals.flvc.org/sal/article/view/107239/102560> writes: "The use
of the same construction to indicate conditionality and (relative) time
(if/when clauses) is very common in African languages, and is found in the
majority of the languages discussed in this volume." There is no need to
grammaticalize the speaker's degree of certainty about these
hypothetical events.

Joey

--
Joseph Lovestrand
British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow
School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics
SOAS University of London

On Sat, Jun 11, 2022 at 4:01 PM Sergey Loesov <sergeloesov at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
>
> In Babylonian Akkadian corpora of the 1st millennium BC the conjununction
> *kī* is claimed to mean both ‘if’ and ‘when’ in the future-time clauses.
> Some people believe that clause-initial *kī* is ‘if’, while *kī* as a
> preverb is ‘when’. The evidence does not always confirm this claim. One
> immediately thinks about the German *wenn*, which is assumed to say both
> ‘if’ and ‘when’ in the future. What shall we make of it? Is it possible
> that language does not oppose a future condition and a future temporal
> clause? If yes, how come?
>
> Best,
>
> Sergey
> _______________________________________________
> 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/20220612/d6dcce7e/attachment.htm>