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In:Diverse Scenarios of Syntactic Complexity
Edited by Albert Álvarez González, Zarina Estrada-Fernández and Claudine Chamoreau
[Typological Studies in Language 126] 2019
► pp. 109–136

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Adverbial subordinators in Yaqui

 | IIFL-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de , México
Published online: 4 July 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.126.05gue
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.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Yaqui sentences
    • 2.1Simple clauses
    • 2.2Relative clauses
    • 2.3Complement clauses
  • 3.Adverbial subordinators, some generalities
  • 4.Yaqui adverbial subordinators
    • 4.1The sample
    • 4.2Specific subordinators
    • 4.3General subordinators
    • 4.4 General subordinators serving as switch-reference marking?
  • 5.Adverbial subordinators in Cahita languages: Initial or final subordinators?
  • 6.Final comments
  • Acknowledgements
  • Abbreviations
  • Notes
  • Narrative corpus
  • References
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Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Guerrero, Lilián
2021. When-clauses and temporal meanings across languages. Folia Linguistica 55:1 ► pp. 35 ff. DOI logo
Guerrero, Lilián
2021. When-clauses and temporal meanings across languages. Folia Linguistica 55:1 ► pp. 35 ff. DOI logo
González, Albert Álvarez
2019. From discourse to syntax. In Diverse Scenarios of Syntactic Complexity [Typological Studies in Language, 126], ► pp. 217 ff. DOI logo
Álvarez González, Albert
2021. The rise of cause/reason adverbial markers in Yaqui (Uto-Aztecan). In Studies at the Grammar-Discourse Interface [Studies in Language Companion Series, 219], ► pp. 313 ff. DOI logo

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