[Lingtyp] 'If you say/ask why' > because

[JOO Ian]

Dear Jeremy,

Jingpho (Sino-Tibetan) seems to have a peculiar case of:

Hpa: What
Majaw: Because
Hpa majaw: Why, lit. what-because
Hpa majaw nga yang: Because, lit. what-because be if

So “why” is “what-because”, but “if why” can also be “because” ...

Source: A dictionary of Jinghpaw usage (in Japanese) http://www.aa.tufs.ac.jp/documents/training/ilc/textbooks/2019jinghpaw3.pdf

Regards,
Ian

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朱　易安
JOO, IAN
准教授
Associate Professor
小樽商科大学
Otaru University of Commerce

🌐 ianjoo.github.io
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2024/11/10 00:15, Jeremy Bradley via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> 작성:

Dear all,

I am looking at the conventionalization, eventually grammaticalization of phrases meaning something along the lines of 'if you say/ask why' as causal conjunctions 'because', in the languages of the world. I'm currently aware of this happening (with some variation in the exact structuring) in:

Mari (Uralic)
Udmurt (Uralic)
Chuvash (Turkic)
Buryat (Mongolic)
Lezgian (Northeast Caucasian)
Tamil (Dravidian)
Middle Indo-Aryan (IE)
Japanese
Korean

... which all have in common that they're SOV languages; it strikes me as plausible that this is a pattern that easily arises when an SOV language "needs" a mechanism for a postposed causal clause. But two things I'm curious about:

1) Does anybody know of other languages that do this, esp. non-SOV-languages?

2) Does anybody know about any systematic research on this process?

Best,
Jeremy

--
Jeremy Bradley, Ph.D.
University of Vienna

http://www.mari-language.com
jeremy.moss.bradley at univie.ac.at

Office address:
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Skype: jeremy.moss.bradley

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