The emergence of conjunctions and phrasal coordination in Khanty
Prior to widespread contact with Russian, Khanty (Uralic; Finno-Ugric) did not have overt conjunctions or phrasal
coordination. Instead, Khanty texts from the late 19th–early 20th centuries only include examples of conjunction-less clausal juxtaposition,
which was used for both clausal and phrasal coordination. By comparing Khanty texts over the 20th century, we trace the emergence of overt
conjunctions and coordination of phrasal constituents. We show that overt conjunctions first appeared in the context of clausal
coordination, followed by coordination of smaller phrases. Based on novel elicitation data, we demonstrate that, in contemporary Khanty, (i)
overt conjunctions are commonplace, (ii) coordinated clausal constituents may be derived via phrasal coordination or clausal coordination
with conjunction reduction/ellipsis, but (iii) ellipsis of syntactic heads is banned (nouns & postpositions) or dispreferred (verbs).
Based on this diachronic picture, we conclude that the coordination of phrasal constituents only emerged in Khanty once overt conjunctions
became available. We derive this correlation from the Maximize On-line Processing principle (
Hawkins
2004), and show that this maxim, usually invoked in the context of speech planning and production, can be successfully applied to
modelling language change.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 1.1Background and goals
- 1.2Sources and methodology
- 2.Coordination in Old Khanty
- 2.1Asyndetic clausal coordination
- 2.2Lack of phrasal coordination/conjunction reduction
- 2.3Co-compounding
- 2.4Interim summary
- 3.The emergence of syndetic coordination
- 3.1Maremjanin’s autobiographical notes from 1936: The first conjunctions
- 3.2Northern Khanty texts from 1964: Spread of conjunctions and emergence of phrasal coordination
- 3.3Eastern Khanty texts from the 1990s: Generalization of conjunctions and spreading of phrasal coordination
- 3.4Prosodic facts
- 3.5Interim summary
- 4.Coordinated constructions in the 21st century Khanty
- 4.1Syndetic clausal coordination
- 4.2Phrasal coordination
- 4.3Conjunction reduction or phrasal coordination?
- 4.4Coordination within nominal and postpositional phrases
- 4.5Other kinds of coordination
- 4.6Co-compounding
- 4.7Summary
- 5.Accounting for the correlation between overt conjunctions and phrasal coordination
- 6.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- List of abbreviations
-
References
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