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

[Marcel Erdal]

Old Uyghur is another SOV language where the construction *nä ü**čün tesär*,
literally 'if one says "Why?"', *very *commonly signifies 'because'.
Marcel Erdal

Am Sa., 9. Nov. 2024 um 18:16 Uhr schrieb Jeremy Bradley via Lingtyp <
lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>:

> 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:
> Institut EVSL
> Abteilung Finno-Ugristik
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>
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>
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