Adverbial subordinators in Yaqui

In this paper, I examine the form and function of Yaqui adverbial subordinators. In contrast to relative and complement subordinators, which are always final and bound in Yaqui, adverbial subordinators can occur in both positions, clause-final and clause-initial; the former are bound morphemes, and the latter are free particles. The adverbial markers in initial position differ from any other subordinators in two ways: they have lexical content and do not demand structural dependent features inside the linked unit. Among the final subordinators, -kai and -o are not only the most productive markers in the sample, but they also introduce several adverbial relations including manner, purpose, temporal, concessive and conditional meanings. In fact, these two subordinating morphemes show a consistent, though not obligatory distribution: while -kai is used when the main and dependent subjects are the same, -o often occurs when the subjects are different. The contrasts observed among the adverbial clauses taking final subordinators and those introduced by initial subordinators suggest that the latter may be somewhat new in the Yaqui grammar. As new adverbial clause linkage markers, they adopt the structural features of coordination instead of subordination.