User:Kayau/Clause chaining

Clause chaining is a mechanism of linking clauses whereby only one of the remaining clauses, typically the last, is finite. It is commonly used in narratives. Switch-reference is an important syntactic phenomenon arising from clause chaining. It is most common in the languages of New Guinea, Australia and the Americas.^[1] A language with clause-chaining phenomena is known as a clause-chaining language, though similar phenomena can also be found in most languages like English^[2]

Characterisation

Definition

Structure

Clause chains have a finite clause, commonly called a final clause because of its most common position. The rest of the clauses are known as medial or non-final clauses, which have reduced tense-aspect-mood inflectional marking, specifies the subject with reference to that of the finite clause, and are temporally related to other medial clauses. For example in the following clause chain, the medial clauses are untensed (in the present participle), have the same subject ('Mary') as the final clause, and are ordered according to chronological succession. The final clause is tensed (in the past tense):

Looking at the clock, remembering that she could not finish the article in a night, realising the deadline was still a week away, Mary decided to go to bed.

Synchronic typology

Clause chains

Syntactic issues

Switch-reference

ŋathu nhinha tharlpa-rdaka-rna waɾa-yi thika-lha

ŋathu nhinha tharlpa-rdaka-rna waɾa-yi thika-rnanhthu

Diachrony

Origins

Subsequent development

Theoretical treatments

Relationship with discourse

Relationship with orthography

See also

• Hypotaxis and parataxis
• Subordination and coordination
• Complement clause

Footnotes

Bibliography

• Austin, P. K. (1981). A grammar of Diyari, South Australia. London: Cambridge University Press.
• Croft, William (2001). Radical Construction Grammar. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198299547.
• Bril, Isabelle (2010-11-25). Clause Linking and Clause Hierarchy. John Benjamins Publishing Company. doi:10.1075/slcs.121. ISBN 9789027287588.
• Dixon, R. M. W. (2010). Basic Linguistic Theory. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. p. 410. ISBN 9780191571459.
• Dixon, R. M. W.; Aikhenvald, Alexandra (2009). The semantics of clause linking : a cross-linguistic typology. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199567225.
• Dixon, R. M. W. (1980). The Languages of Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521223296.
• Dooley, Robert A. (2010). "Exploring Clause Chaining" (PDF). SIL Electronic Working Papers.
• Givón, T. (2001-07-19). Syntax. John Benjamins Publishing Company. doi:10.1075/z.syn2. ISBN 9789027297921.
• Haiman, John; Thompson, Sandra (1988-01-01). Clause Combining in Grammar and Discourse. John Benjamins Publishing Company. doi:10.1075/tsl.18. ISBN 9789027278593.
• Payne, Thomas (1997). Describing Morphosyntax: A Guide for Field Linguists. ISBN 9780521588058.
• Shopen, Timothy (1985). Language Typology and Syntactic Description. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. pp. 235-86. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511619434. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)