Loan conjunctions in comparative perspective

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Thomas Stolz
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 548033828

Conjunctions count among the earliest and most frequently borrowed grammatical elements in language contact. Independent of the donor language and the replica language, there are striking recurrent patterns across numerous language contact situations that characterize loan conjunctions as a linguistic phenomenon that is worthwhile studying in-depth. Especially the high number of cases of borrowed adversative conjunctions like English but has attracted the attention of theoreticians of language contact. On the basis of cross-linguistically recurrent patterns, several strong hypotheses about the chronology according to which conjunctions are borrowed have been put forward, namely (A) adversative > disjunctive > conjunctive (= BUT > OR > AND), (B) {concessive / conditional / causal / purposive} > other subordinators, (C) factual complementizers > non-factual complementizers, and (D) coordination {subordination / complementizer}. In the original proposal of (A) - (C), the chronologies represented universals of grammatical borrowing, i.e., they could not be violated against. In the meantime, several potential counterexamples have surfaced which challenge the universality of the above hypotheses. The question arises whether the counterexamples are negligible exceptions that can be explained by sweepingly referring to unspecified structural and/or cultural factors which supposedly have an impact on the realization of the chronologies. The project aims at determining the validity of (A) - (D) on the basis of a sample of 500 replica languages of which it is known that they have borrowed conjunctions from donor languages such as Arabic, French, Italian, Persian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, etc. This is not only the biggest sample ever used for the purposes of research on loan conjunctions but it also covers a huge set of informations on language structure, variation, and cultural aspects that might influence the borrowability of a given conjunction. In this way, it will be possible for the first time to make robust statements about a network of factors that come into play in the process of borrowing. The results of the project will contribute considerably to the progress in theory building by way of rejecting, modifying, and testing extant hypotheses about loan conjunctions and their cognitive-pragmatic foundation.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants