[Lingtyp] IF and WHEN in the future

[tangzhengda]

Dear Sergey,


Cross-linguistically, temporal and conditional seem to converge more or less in the future situation. Both are 'irealis'. And the conditional if could be regarded as the TYPE generalized from many event-like TOKENS of future when.  That may explain why in a large proportion of Chinese dialects the counterpart of IF is totally absent, in stead the postposed elments with the etymology of time are used for both future tokens and conditional types.  Of course there are other types, like the meta-linguistically originated de-hua ~的话 （lit. 'the wording of~', or 'in saying that~'） and the causative-associated shi 使  together with SAY 讲，etc.


For short, if is a luxury, and probably etymologically secondary, compared to the primary when.


Zhengda










--

唐正大
中国社会科学院语言研究所《中国语文》编辑部
北京市建国门内大街5号，100732


Institute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,
No.5 Jianguomennei Dajie, Beijing, China; 100732




At 2022-06-11 22:59:47, "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    
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