Coordination, converbs and clause chaining in Coptic Egyptian typology and structural analysis

Coptic Egyptian (3rd–13th c. CE) possesses a large variety of coordinating constructions. The most central pattern for symmetric clause linkage involves the coordinating conjunction awɔː ‘and’. Symmetric awɔː-coordinations at different levels (phrasal, clausal, discourse paragraph) differ systematically in meaning. In the domain of asymmetric clause coordination the language employs special verb conjugations. The focus of this study is on converbs and conjunctive verbs. Coordinating converbs belong to the paradigm of relative tenses, which formally distinguish a large family of focus-sensitive constructions from pragmatically neutral declarative sentences. The conjunctive covers a broad spectrum of semantic relations between clauses, crossing the traditional distinction between coordination and subordination.