[Lingtyp] IF and WHEN in the future

[David Gil]

Dear Sergey, dear all,


In Indonesian, the most common way of marking an "if/when clause", in 
the future or otherwise, is by means of the marker /kalo/, as in 
(1).(Etymologically, /kalo/ is derived from the combination of original 
Malay /jika/ 'if' plus Arabic loan /lau/ 'if'.)

(1) Kalo tambah daun kunyit enak

KALO add leaf turmeric tasty

'If/when you add/added turmeric leaf it will be / was tasty'

However, like all function words in the language, /kalo/ does not 
discriminate between parts of speech; it can apply equally readily to 
expressions denoting events, activities, properties, things, 
whatever.Thus, sentence (2) is equally natural:

(2) Kalo daun kunyit enak

KALO leaf turmeric tasty

'As for turmeric leaf, it's tasty'

As suggested by the English translation 'as for', /kalo/ in (2) seems to 
be marking a (usually newly introduced) topic.This in turn suggests that 
the "if/when" usages of /kalo/, as in (1), are also more appropriately 
analyzable as involving a topic marker, with a more perspicuous 
translation of (1) being along the lines of 'As for adding turmeric 
leaf, that will be / was tasty'.

David


On 11/06/2022 16:59, Sergey Loesov wrote:
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
> In Babylonian Akkadian corpora of the 1^st  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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-- 
David Gil

Senior Scientist (Associate)
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany

Email:gil at shh.mpg.de
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091
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