{"id":488,"date":"2024-04-29T01:58:37","date_gmt":"2024-04-28T22:58:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/cifu14\/?page_id=488"},"modified":"2024-05-06T15:23:50","modified_gmt":"2024-05-06T12:23:50","slug":"symposium-b7","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/cifu14\/symposium-b7\/","title":{"rendered":"Symposium B.7: Clause combining in Uralic languages: functional and interactional perspectives"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Organizers: Larisa Leisi\u00f6 and Ritva Laury<\/p>\n\n\n

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Clause combining is a relatively well articulated field in linguistic typology (Shopen 2007; Croft 2022, 461-615). The term refers to combining of two or several clauses into a complex sentence. In a complex sentence, the relationship between clauses can be either coordination or subordination. Coordination<\/strong> of clauses has been traditionally distinguished as asyndetic versus <\/em>syndetic, with the shift from the former to the latter via <\/em>development of writing systems. (Haspelmath 2007.) Further, coordinate clauses are classified into conjunctive (semantically analyzed as additive<\/em>, Malchukov 2004: 186; Croft 2022: 470), disjunctive and adversative. Coordinate clauses can be considered as \u201cco-ranking structures\u201d. They have finite verb predication and are contrasted to \u201cchaining structures\u201d that have one \u201cdominating\u201d verb along with clauses with \u201cmorphologically deficient verbs\u201d (Longacre 2007: 374-376). The latter are prototypical subordinate<\/strong> clauses. A subordinate clause has a grammatical function within the main clause: it can be a modifier of a noun or verb phrase, or the entire main clause, or it can be a subject or direct object. Clausal subjects and objects are usually called complement clauses. Modifiers of noun phrase are relative clauses. Modifiers of the verb phrase or the whole clause are adverbial clauses. (Longacre 2007: 374.) The latter, but also some certain subtypes of the complement clause were identified and named on functional basis (Cristofaro 2003 and 2005, Thompson et al. 2007).<\/p>\n

In descriptions of Uralic languages, syntax has traditionally been paid less attention to than other language levels, phonology, morphology and vocabulary. The situation has improved in the last decades. Syntax is given its due place in recent grammatical descriptions of distinct languages, e.g., Tundra Nenets by Nikolaeva 2014, and in collective monographs containing systematic descriptions of Uralic languages: Abondolo & V\u00e4lij\u00e4rvi (eds.) 2023, Bakr\u00f3-Nagy et al. (eds.) 2022.<\/p>\n

In the last three decades, many grammatical categories and subordinate clauses among them have been examined from usage-based and interactional linguistics perspective (e.g., Schegloff, Ochs and Thompson 1996). In interactional linguistics, language use is seen as a social activity along with other activity types (Couper-Kuhlen & Selting 2018). Subordination in Finnish and Estonian has been described in the conversation-analytical framework with special attention to complement clauses. The status of parenthetic clauses, for instance, clauses with interrogative verbs as main clauses has been disputed (Hakulinen et al. 2003; Keevallik 2006 & 2011, Laury 2006; Koivisto, Laury and Sepp\u00e4nen 2011). The subordinate status of Finnish relative clauses has also been questioned (Laury & Helasvuo 2023). \u00a0Usage-based approaches make visible similar grammatical processes observed through regularities in conversational structures in Finnish, Estonian and Swedish conversational structures (Hakulinen et al. 2003). Thus the contiguity of cultures can lead to similar processes in language structures without visible influence of language contacts.<\/p>\n

We know the general strategies of combining sentences in Uralic languages. These include originally asyndetically juxtaposed coordinate clauses and infinite predication of subordinate clauses including nominalization, participles, and verbal adverbs, typologically considered subordinate but not normally counted as clausal at least in Finnish grammar (e.g., Hakulinen et al. 2003). Changes in the type of subordinate predication as well as borrowing of connectors have occurred in the course of language contacts (Skribnik 2022 and references therein). The most exact structural account of clause combination has got Tundra Nenets in the grammar description (Nikolaeva 2014) and analysis of relative and complement clauses (Nikolaeva 2017).<\/p>\n

We invite data-driven functionally informed papers on clause combining in distinct Uralic languages with the following topics, to be considered as possibilities but not limitations.<\/p>\n