2025/12/28 by Irina Burukina · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation #Phonetics and Phonology Research #Linguistic Variation and Morphology
paper · doi:10.16995/glossa.23610
The paper discusses mechanisms of clausal adjunction, that is, transforming a clause into a modifier with a specific interpretation (purpose, temporal, causal, etc.). It focuses on infinitival rationale clauses in Mari (Uralic), which can be headed simultaneously by a marker identical to the dative postposition (lan) and a complementizer (manən). Although in line with the popular P- approach to clausal adjunction (e.g., Landau 2021), analyzing lan as a P head is problematic because its distributional properties are atypical for an adposition and align closely with those of a clausal functional head, which prompts a question about its actual categorial status. I examine several ways to reconcile the P-approach with the Mari data, demonstrate that all these options face problems, and outline an alternative Mood-account. I propose that rationale clauses contain a MoodP with a teleological modal inserted as its head (spelled out as lan), which determines the semantic type and distribution of these clausal adjuncts—the presence of the modal allows rationale clauses to be used as modifiers predicated of the matrix TP. The paper contributes to the discussion of modifying clauses by showing that they can be regulated from within and offering a dual-strategy view that captures cross-linguistic variation; it further touches upon the issue of reanalyzing and grammaticalizing adpositions and ‘shifting’ grammatical categories.