[Lingtyp] from connector to focus marker

[Eitan Grossman]

Hi all,

>
> Whether an erstwhile relative clause subordinator can attach itself to the
> focus constituent as a cleft is reinterpreted as a mono-clausal focus
> construction strikes me an empirical question. I’m not personally aware of
> a case in which this happened, but I certainly don’t see an a-priori reason
> why it couldn’t happen.
>
>
This seems to be what happened in Ancient Egyptian-Coptic (Afroasiatic),
where a prefix associated with relativization became a verbal prefix
associated with focus. In the following example, it is the past relative
prefix nt- that is relevant.

*nt-a-u-r-šmmo                         erô-tn   etbe-neu-hbêue
                 ethoou*

foc-pst-3pl-do-stranger        to-2pl because-poss.pl.3pl-deeds     rel-evil
‘It is *because of their evil deeds* that they have become strangers to
you.’

The diachronic story is complicated, but two things do stand out: (1) the
prefixes associated with focus constructions did develop out of
relativizers/nominalzers in cleft sentence constructions, (2)
synchronically, the construction is not easily analyzed as a biclausal
cleft anymore. For discussion, examples, and references, see an old handout
here
<https://www2.hu-berlin.de/predicate_focus_africa/data/2014-06-24_Grossmann_PCF.in.Coptic.pdf>
and
for more on how it became a prefix, here
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331705561_Swimming_against_the_typological_tide_or_paddling_along_with_language_change_Dispreferred_structures_and_diachronic_biases_in_affix_ordering#fullTextFileContent>
.

Eitan



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> There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In
> (Leonard Cohen)
>
> --
>
>
>
>
>
> *From: *Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of
> mohammad rasekh <mrasekhmahand at yahoo.com>
> *Date: *Saturday, February 18, 2023 at 5:06 AM
> *To: *LINGTYP LINGTYP <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Subject: *[Lingtyp] from connector to focus marker
>
> Dear All,
>
> There is a particle in Persian (Iranian language) which has multiple
> functions. This particle is ‘ke’, literally meaning ‘that’. Broadly, it has
> two general/main functions: a)connector (connecting complement, relative
> and adverbial clauses), b) marking some parts of information structure
> (focus, rhetorical question, mirativity, indifference, etc.). Concerning
> this particle, I have two questions:
>
> First, is there any evidence in other languages in which a particle moves
> from subordinator to information structure marker? If there is, I
> appreciate providing me with the sources.
>
> Second, the position of ‘ke’ as adverbial clause marker is not fixed. It
> may appear clause initially, but it moves to different parts of the
> adverbial clause (not the final position). Actually it ‘shifts’. Is there
> any evidence in other languages for this ‘subordinator shift’?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Mohammad Rasekh-Mahand
>
>
>
>
>
> Mohammad Rasekh-Mahand
>
> Linguistics Department,
>
> Bu-Ali Sina University,
>
> Hamedan, Iran.
>
> Postal Code: 6517838695
>
> https://basu.academia.edu/MohammadRasekhmahand
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