Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Detail #23: Conjunctions with dummy pronouns

This idea has some similarities to this old post, but with quite a different locus of marking and even basically a different function altogether: this time, conjunctions no longer serve to mark the relation between two verb phrases (or even two nouns, by way of implicitly coordinated verb phrases), but marks something about a single verb phrase or noun phrase.

In some language, (I would especially like it in one where conjunctions are followed by an oblique case along the line of what English does, only with non-pronouns as well - alternatively, case marking is sensitive to context), there could be a commonly used construction with dummies carrying grammatical information about the VP or NP in which they occur, so, for instance,

A bit like if "... and shit" was grammaticalized, but for a more wide range of meanings: TAM, case/adposition-like things, adjectival things for nouns, indefinite determiners and quantifying expressions, ... some other expressions could be formed likewise with and + noun.
(obviative) it and (obviative) it : some 
 ran around and it.obl : ran around intently, ran around (perfective)
stone and them : stones (if the language lacks, say, morphological plural for inanimates or somesuch)
bean and it: some beans (with uncountable nouns, to express large quantity) 
we thought and at it (locative case of some kind) : we considered, but did not reach a conclusion
 we thought and in it (locative case of some other kind): we considered carefully
we thought and it.acc : we concluded
we traveled the land and it.acc: we passed through the land
This would probably go at the end of the vp?
Examples with nouns instead of dummies:
bean and bag : a bagful of beans
 fish and net: a catch of fish
water and pitcher: a pitcherful of water
To obtain the meaning "and" usually would entail would require reversing the order of the nouns:
net and fish: some/a fish and a/some nets
bag and bean: a bag and some beans
 ...
Over time, the conjunction easily could turn into an affix, and sound changes could obscure the relation to the conjunction.

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