[Lingtyp] Question-answer coordination

[Daniel Ross]

Dear David,

Thank you for this very interesting example. I'm not aware of any exact
parallels to that, but let me suggest some threads you might be able to tie
together. I briefly remarked on this on p.9-10 of my dissertation (
https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.5546425).

In a number of languages, there is homophony between a topic or focus
marker and coordinator. (Typically this is a noun coordinator, if noun and
verb/clause coordination differ.) One representative reference for this is
Schwarz & Fiedler (2007: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110199093.5.267), as
well as some functions of conjunctions described by Bätscher (2014:
http://summit.sfu.ca/item/14530). I've seen some other information
elsewhere but haven't organized a full list of references on the topic yet
(it's a topic of interest for a future project so if you are anyone else is
interested in that, please feel free to contact me).

There is also a widespread tendency for a coordinator 'and' to be used in a
conditional function (Haiman 1983:
https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(83)90014-0), as in English conditional
imperatives: "Do that again and I'm leaving!" etc. Furthermore, it has been
suggested that conditionals could be a kind of topic (Haiman 1978:
https://doi.org/10.2307/412787).

And specifically for Georgian *da* there is an interesting case of
borrowing where it is now used as a conditional conjunction 'if' in
Mingrelian (mentioned on p.132 of my dissertation). This is summarized by
Harris & Campbell (1995:290 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511620553) [and
also discussed by Abesadze (cited there) if you can read Georgian].

I believe all of those pieces are at least broadly related and represent
some kind of grammaticalization network but I haven't yet worked out the
details. The final thread to tie into the rest of this is regarding
questions, but since wh-questions are often considered to be broadly
similar to topic or focus (especially in the generative tradition, e.g. the
"left periphery" at the top of a syntax tree), that seems promising as
well. From what you described, I wonder if this usage might be similar to
"echo" questions ("You bought WHAT?") in other languages-- is this some
kind of "echo answer"? If so, this might actually be topic/focus rather
than typical wh-question structure.

An open question is about diachrony, both regarding typical
grammaticalization pathways (is this unidirectional, and if so in which
direction?), and also etymological. Some apparent cases of
pseudocoordination (i.e. unusual uses of coordinators) may actually not be
due to grammaticalization of the conjunction 'and' into another function,
but instead a relic of its usage prior to its grammaticalization as a
conjunction.

As an alternative hypothesis, one other possibility is that this involves
some kind of ellipsis, so you might ask an informant if they would say
something like lit. 'What did I buy and I bought bread.' as some kind of
coordination of the repeated question and the answer as a full sentence. If
that is not the case, then I would suggest it's something related to the
ideas above. If so, it might just be normal coordination with an
interesting discourse strategy for answering questions. Also, is there a
way to disambiguate between a question "What did I buy" and a indirect
question or relative clause "What I bought"? I imagine this construction
might involve the latter, so the literal translation would be more like
'[What I bought] and bread'.

Daniel Ross
ALT webmaster
University of California, Riverside

On Thu, Sep 19, 2024 at 6:28 AM Christian Lehmann via Lingtyp <
lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:

> Thanks. Even 60 years ago, you would probably not have wanted to convert
> one of these constructions into the other by a transformational rule; but
> at least the information structure appears to be the same.
> --
>
> Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
> Rudolfstr. 4
> 99092 Erfurt
> Deutschland
> Tel.: +49/361/2113417
> E-Post: christianw_lehmann at arcor.de
> Web: https://www.christianlehmann.eu
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