[Lingtyp] Insubordinate 'until' clauses

Tue Sep 27 13:43:38 UTC 2022

Dear all – Like Riccardo, I too was reminded by Jesus’ examples of the focus particle uses of hasta.

In the simplest case, this requires an NP complement in focus, as in Hasta Lourdes vino ‘Even Lourdes came.’ This locates the referent on a scale compared to other referents involved in the same event, and the speaker presents the involvement of the referent at issue as surprising or extreme.

In Jesus’ examples, it’s instead the event itself that is presented as an extreme point on a scale. This doesn’t inherently require a complementizer (cf. English _Lourdes even came to the party_), but since hasta que already exists independently as a conjunction, we may be looking at a case of dual/parallel motivation.

The connection between the focus particle meaning and the temporal conjunction meaning is of course one of heterosemy: the temporal conjunction sense defines an upper bound on a scale; the two senses are clearly related.

Lastly, a dual motivation analysis doesn’t replace Jesus’ insubordination analysis, but incorporates and potentially motivates it.

Best -- Juergen

Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
Professor, Department of Linguistics
University at Buffalo

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From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Riccardo Giomi <rgiomi at campus.ul.pt>
Date: Tuesday, September 27, 2022 at 3:31 AM
To: Jesus Francisco Olguin Martinez <olguinmartinez at ucsb.edu>
Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Insubordinate 'until' clauses
Dear Jesús,

My Spanish is very basic, but a parallel construction exists in Portuguese (até (que)), which I do speak quite well, so maybe I can share a thought about the latter language which may also apply to Spanish.

In Portuguese, and I believe also in Spanish, até/hasta does not only mean until but also even. My gut feeling is that it is this *adverbial* meaning which is relevant to the (Portuguese) construction, so (the Portuguese equivalents of) your examples would quite straightforwardly translate as You even bother to drop by / They even won a game and would therefore not be insubordinate clauses.

If this is so, the presence of que would prima facie appear unexpected, but I do recognize this pattern from other adverbs like quase, which, colloquially, also occur in main clauses with an *unexpected* complementizer -- i.e. they seem to be reinterpreted by some speakers as sort-of predicates -- e.g. Pt. Este gato quase (que) parece um cão, 'This cat almost looks like a dog', parallel to Este gato até (que) parece um cão, 'This cat even looks like a dog'.

Whether this hypothesis also makes sense for the Austronesian languages mentioned by David (i.e. whether 'until'/'even' polysemy also exists in those languages) I don't know, but it is somewhat intriguing in this sense that David also speaks of sampe in the relevant construction as having an "intensifying meaning" (which is how some people would refer to the function of even) and of the rest of the utterance as "the complement" of the latter.

Hope this helps, otherwise my apologies!

Best wishes,
Riccardo

Jesus Francisco Olguin Martinez <olguinmartinez at ucsb.edu<mailto:olguinmartinez at ucsb.edu>> escreveu no dia segunda, 26/09/2022 à(s) 21:02:
Dear all,

I hope this email finds you well.

I was wondering if there are any works that have explored insubordinate 'until' clauses. I am interested in examples like the following Spanish constructions:

1. ¡Hasta que te dignas a pasar por aquí!
2. !Vaya, hasta que ganaron un juego, ya era hora!

In the languages I have identified these constructions, 'until' clauses are used for expressing 'surprise' or for 'complaining'.

Any readings will be greatly appreciated.

Best,

--
Jesús Olguín Martínez
Ph.D, Dept. of Linguistics
University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)
Home - Jesús Olguín (jesusolguinmartinez.com)<https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jesusolguinmartinez.com%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR2len8OjCPh6HfiREXrVK56ZMgLrXDUolQdO1G-cG9z2DDl4XM5ZvueVqs&data=05%7C01%7Cjb77%40buffalo.edu%7Cc403a615ddf543a5819908daa05a061f%7C96464a8af8ed40b199e25f6b50a20250%7C0%7C0%7C637998606967684983%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=RyoL4qiaijzXvLRWy%2B1Zs%2Bb6tZydtF%2BRrkjwFkzYBcE%3D&reserved=0>

Dissertation:
Olguín Martínez, Jesús. 2022. Temporal adverbial clauses in the languages of the world: Clause-linking strategies. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Recent publications:
Olguín Martínez, Jesús. 2022. Contact-induced language contact: The case of Mixtec adverbial clauses. Journal of Language Contact. Evolution of Languages, Contact and Discourse 15. 1-70.
Olguín Martínez, Jesús & Nicholas Lester.  2021. A quantitative analysis of counterfactual conditionals in the world’s languages. Italian Journal of Linguistics 33. 147-182.
Olguín Martínez, Jesús. 2021. ‘As if’ constructions in world-wide perspective. Journal Linguistic typology at the crossroads 1. 2-33.

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--
Riccardo Giomi, Ph.D.
University of Liège
Département de langues modernes : linguistique, littérature et traduction
Research group Linguistique contrastive et typologie des langues
F.R.S.-FNRS Postdoctoral fellow (CR - FC 43095)
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