grammatica et verba glamor and verve · grammatica et verba glamor and verve studies in south...

Grammatica et verbaGlamor and verve

Studies in South Asian, historical, and Indo-Europeanlinguistics in honor of

Hans Henrich Hockon the occasion

of his seventy-fifth birthday

edited by

Shu-Fen Chen and Benjamin Slade

Beech Stave PressAnn Arbor • New York

© Beech Stave Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Grammatica et verba : glamor and verve : studies in South Asian, historical, and Indo-European linguistics in honor of Hans Henrich Hock on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday / edited by Shu-Fen Chen and Benjamin Slade.

pages cmIncludes bibliographical references.ISBN ---- (alk. paper)

. Indo-European languages. . Lexicography. . Historical linguistics. I. Hock, HansHenrich, - honoree. II. Chen, Shu-Fen, editor of compilation. III. Slade, Ben-jamin, editor of compilation.

.

–dc

Printed in the United States of America

Table of ContentsHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viiBibliography of Hans Henrich Hock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ixList of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi

Anvita Abbi, Traces of Archaic Human Language Structurein the Great Andamanese Language. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Shu-Fen Chen, A Study of Punctuation Errors in the Chinese Diamond SutraBased on Sanskrit Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Jennifer Cole and José I. Hualde, Prosodic Structure in Sound Change . . . . . . . .

Probal Dasgupta, Scarlet and Green: Phi-Inert Indo-Aryan Nominalsin a Co-representation Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice Davison, Reversible and Non-reversible Dative Subjects:A Structural Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Madhav M. Deshpande, Sanskrit Traditions during the Rule of the Peshwas:Role, Maintenance, and Transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Jost Gippert, An Outline of the History of Maldivian Writing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Olav Hackstein, Polar Questions and Non-headed Conditionalsin Cross-linguistic and Historical Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Stephanie W. Jamison, RV sá hináyám (VI..) with a Return Visitto náyám and nána . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Brian Joseph, Aspirates, Fricatives, and Laryngealsin Avestan and Indo-Iranian. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Jared S. Klein, Some Rhetorical Aspects of AdjacentInterstanzaic Phrasal Repetition in the Rigveda. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Kelly Lynne Maynard, Balkan Sprachbund Features in Samsun Albanian . . . . . . .

H. Craig Melchert, Agreement Patterns in Old and Middle Hittite . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Adriana Molina-Muñoz, Sanskrit Compounds and the Architectureof the Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Don Ringe, The Linguistic Diversity of Aboriginal Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

v

Table of Contents

Steven Schäufele, Constituent Order in Song Lyrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Marco Shappeck, Ecuadorian Andean Spanish ya:Contact, Grammaticalization, and Discursivization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Benjamin Slade, Question Particles and Relative Clauses in the History ofSinhala, with Comparison to Early and Modern Dravidian. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Karumuri V. Subbarao and Rajesh Kumar, Aspects of Agreement in Hmar . .

Yasuko Suzuki, On Characterizing Sanskrit anusvara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sarah Tsiang, Horses Lost, Found, and Jockeying for Positionin the English Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

vi

From Shu-Fen Chen and Benjamin Slade (eds.), Grammatica et verba: Glamor and verve. Studies in South Asian, historical,and Indo-European linguistics in honor of Hans Henrich Hock on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday. Copyright ©

Beech Stave Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

Polar Questions and Non-headed Conditionalsin Cross-linguistic and Historical Perspective *

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

The expression of polar questions in ancient Indo-EuropeanlanguagesIn a typological survey, Siemund (:–) lists six strategies for marking po-lar questions. In decreasing order of cross-linguistic frequency, these are intonation,interrogative particles, interrogative tags, disjunction (A-not-A construction), con-stituent order, and verbal inflection. A complete documentation of polar questionmarking in the older Indo-European languages has not been undertaken so far. Theindications are, however, that ancient Indo-European accords with the typologicalfrequency pattern described by Siemund, in that intonation is the most widespreadstrategy employed. For some representative examples, see the following table.

/ →

Vedic “pluti”: trimoric prolongation of word-final vowels (Strunk :,Etter :–, –)

Greek morphologically and syntactically unmarked polar questions (Hirt:, Schwyzer :f., Chantraine :f.)

Latin morphologically and syntactically unmarked polar questions (Hirt:, Hofmann and Szantyr :, Kühner and Stegmann:–)

Tocharian see §.Hittite occasional plene spelling of the vowel in the final syllable of the

constituent under interrogative focus (Mascheroni :f., Hoffner:, Hoffner and Melchert :; cf. Oettinger apud Strunk:f.)

The second-most frequent way of marking polar questions in older Indo-European∗I am indebted to Dieter Gunkel and Ron Kim for valuable comments on a preliminary version of

this paper. Glosses follow the Leipzig glossing rules (http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php). The following abbreviations are also used: VRaise = verb fronting; NegRaise = negationfronting; INPQ = inner negative polar question; ONPQ = outer negative polar question (see below§...).

Olav Hackstein

consists in prefixing or suffixing polar questions with rhetorical questions (i.e. thesubtype of polar questions called stimulus questions, see Hackstein :f. n. ),which may eventually develop into polar question particles via grammaticalization.Among the source structures of polar question particles are content questions (,) and negation particles. Following is a selective overview of examples:

Q →

Source Domain Target Language Literature Sanskrit kad Etter :f., , Hackstein

:

Latin quid, quippe Hackstein :f., f. Polish czy Hackstein :f.

Latin atqui Hackstein :f.Toch. A assi Hackstein :f.

OHG ni/ne . . . na Lühr :–

Latin non(ne) Kühner and Stegmann :

The third-most frequent strategy of marking polar questions is to change the wordorder (cf. Hirt :–). Particularly widespread is fronting the negator (if present)and the verb (VRaise, NegRaise). Cf. the contrasting word order in OHG SVO-declaratives (a) versus VSO-interrogatives (b), and Latin SOV-declaratives (a) ver-sus VSO-interrogatives (b):

OHG

. a. ih.

fursahurenounce..

[unholdun].devil...

‘I renounce the devil.’b. forsahhis™tu

renounce..--.

unholdun?devil...

‘Do you renounce the devil?’ (Fränk. Taufgelöbnis ; Müller :)

Latin

. a. hortumgarden...

etand

gestationempromenade...

videt.overlook..

‘It (the room) overlooks the garden and promenade.’ (Plin. Ep. ..)b. vides

see..

hunc?he..

‘Do you see him?’ (Plin. Ep. ..)

The diachronic data from Indo-European languages suggest that the V-interrogativeconstruction, as grammaticalized in Germanic, arose from an earlier linguistic stage

Polar Questions and Non-headed Conditionals

where the default marking of polar questions was intonational with no verb or nega-tion movement required, but where the negation and the verb could be fronted forsemantic and pragmatic reasons, e.g. to signal the speaker’s strategic choice to high-light negator and verb as new topics. Consider the following pairs of polar questionsin Latin, where the SOV order (a) contrasts with VFocOV (b), and SOV (a)contrasts with FocVO (b):

. a. Etiamalso

tu.

argentummoney...

tenes?hold..

‘Do you really have the money?’ (Ter. Heaut. )b. TenesFoc

hold..

quidwhat

dicam?say...

‘Do you know what I’m supposed to say?’ (Ter. Heaut. )

. a. Pugnantiacontradicting...

te.

loquispeak.

non

vides?see..

‘Don’t you see that you contradict yourself?’ (Cic. Tusc. .)b. NonFoc

videssee..

me.

exout.of

cursurarunning...

anhelitumbreathless...

etiamalso

ducere?pull.

[ONPQ]

‘Don’t you see I’m out of breath from running?’ (Pl. Asin. )

As will emerge from the data presented in this article, this latter system is recon-structible for Proto-Indo-European. In the course of later developments in the indi-vidual Indo-European languages, some languages like German, English, and Dutchhave grammaticalized verb movement as the standard syntactic means of expressingpolar questions. By contrast, Latin, Vedic, Tocharian, and Hittite preserve the oldersystem, in which verb and negation fronting as a mark of polar questions was drivenby semantic and pragmatic factors.

Ancient Indo-European languages that change word order to express polar ques-tions include:

= Outer Negated Polar questions, as per Büring and Gunlogson and Hartung , see §...For typological data exemplifying the functional unity of interrogative subject-verb inversion and focus

marking, see Haiman .

Olav Hackstein

→

Word Order Change Language LiteratureVRaise Germanic Schrodt :; see §...

optionally in Latin,Tocharian, Hittite

see §§., .,

optionally in Vedic Etter :f.NegRaise Germanic see §§., .

Latin see §.Tocharian see §.Hittite see §

Vedic see §

Overlap of polar questions with conditionals and complementizersIt is a well-known fact that the function of questions is not restricted to conveyinginterrogative speech acts, but includes non-interrogative speech acts as well as theorganization of discourse.

Function Interrogative ConstructionDirective speech act Would you mind repeating that?Discourse organization interrogative discourse particles

causal-evidential English why?! (Quirk et al. :)Latin quippe, additive Skt. kim. ca (Hackstein :–)

One indication of the importance of interrogative-based discourse organizationis the frequent grammaticalization of rhetorical questions as complementizers(Interrogative-to-Complementizer Shift; for an overview, see Hackstein ). Whilecontent questions may undergo the Interrogative-to-Complementizer shift, polarquestions develop differently. Here it is not the construction marker but the structuralconfiguration which takes on new functions. In particular, the word order templateof polar questions tends to converge with the template of conditionals and comple-mentizers.

Haiman (, :f.) was the first to document the cross-linguistic tendencyto cast protases in the form of polar questions, and he convincingly laid out the con-nection between the functional affinities and the formal overlap of polar questions andconditionals as well. To begin with, “conditionals may (in a sense) be paraphrased asquestions”; furthermore, they overlap functionally with questions, because “condi-tionals are topics,” and correspondingly “the formal mark of topic status in a numberof languages is often an interrogative morpheme or construction” (Haiman :).Yet although Haiman’s explanation is persuasive, the apparent syntactic identity of


headless conditionals with polar questions alone does not prove a source-target re-lationship between the two constructions. In fact, the formal overlap between polarquestions and conditionals is frequently not complete. Thus, German and Englishheadless V-conditionals exhibit interrogative word order but not interrogative into-nation. To maintain that questions diachronically develop into conditionals, cases likethese necessitate the additional assumption of a loss of interrogative intonation.

Here we face a longstanding problem of syntactic reconstruction, and the questionwhether the formal similarity or identity of two functionally different constructionsentitles us to cast them in a diachronic source-target relationship. By itself and withoutadditional criteria, such conclusions may represent pitfalls; cf. Harris and Campbell: on the marker-structure fallacy. To exclude such fallacies, additional criteriaare needed. In Hackstein :, I enumerated three principal provisos:

a. the attestation of prototypes;b. the existence of typological parallels;c. the explanatory power of the claimed source-target development in explaining

constructional anomalies.

In fact, the diachronic survey of Indo-European languages to follow brings tolight additional cases of interrogative-based conditionals while satisfying the crite-ria needed to bolster the Question-to-Conditional/Complementizer Shift proposedby Haiman ().

Data from English, German, Latin, and Tocharian. Early Modern English and Present-Day EnglishTo express a conditional, Present-Day English may use the diachronically persistentheadless V-conditional construction alongside the innovative and standard if-clauseformat. As is known, V-conditionals exhibit the same word order as interrogatives:

. a. I’m wondering, could I get a convincing answer?b. Could I get a convincing answer, I’d be happy.

The attested linguistic history of English indeed substantiates the claim of an un-derlying diachronic continuity between interrogative and conditional syntax. For in-stance, the interrogative origin of V-conditionals explains a formal quirk. In English,negated headless conditional clauses demand the word order --not, whichprecludes the use of the clitic form of the negation -n’t, e.g.

. a. Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I would not have believed it. (Quirk et al.:)

b. *Hadn’t I seen it . . .

Olav Hackstein

On closer inspection, the --not template turns out to reflect the diachron-ically persistent word order that was standard in interrogatives of the Early ModernEnglish period. Thus in Early Modern English, negated polar interrogatives requirethe negation to follow the auxiliary and the subject, if the subject is a pronoun, i.e.--not, see Blake (:):

. Hadst thou not order? (Shakespeare, Measure for Measure ..)

Shakespeare’s V-conditionals likewise exhibit the same word order, cf. Blake ::

. Had I not known those customs,I should haue beene beholding to your paper. (Henry VIII ..–)

In sum, the diachronic continuity between interrogative and conditional syntax offersthe best explanation for the constructional anomaly of negated Present-Day EnglishV-conditionals.

. Old and Middle High German.... P Q + VR. Verb fronting is the diachronically persistent and stan-dard way of marking polar questions in German, cf. Schrodt (:):

OHG

. furstuontutunderstand..

iryou.

thisuthis...

elliu?all...

‘Did you understand all of this?’ (T. .; Matt. :)

MHG

. tuontdo..

sîthey

diryou..

iht?something

‘Are they doing something to you?’ (Iwein )

. kumetcome..

unswe.

Kriemhilt?Kriemhilt

‘Is Kriemhild coming to us?’ (Nib. .)

. wilwant..

duyou.

mirI.

helfen,help.

edelnoble

Sîvrit,/Siegfried

werbencourt.

die...

minneclîchen?lovely...

‘Do you want to help me, noble Siegfried, to court the lovely maid?’ (Nib..–)


.... C + VR (V-C). The V-conditional con-struction prevails in OHG and MHG. For a minimal pair contrasting question andconditional, cf. () above and () below.

OHG

. farmove..

ihI

ufup

zeto

himile,heaven...

darthere

pist--tube..--you

mitwith

heriearmy...‘If I ascend to heaven, there you will be with an army.’ (O. ..)

MHG

. solt--tushall..--you

immerever

herzenlîchevery

zeron...

werldeworld...

werdenbecome.

vrô/happy

dazthis

geschihthappen-.

vonthrough

mannesman..

minne.love...

‘Should you ever become happy on this earth, this would come about throughthe love of a man.’ (Nib. .–)

. erloubetallow..

mir™zI.--it..

mînmy

herre,master...

ichI

getuodo..

imhe.

leit.woe...‘If my master allows me to, I’ll kill him.’ (Nib. .)

. wil™tuwant..--you

niht

eigenowned

sîn,/be.

sôso

muost™(t)umust..--you

dichyou..

scheidenseparate.

‘If you don’t want to belong to the servants, you have to separate.’ (Nib. .–)

.... Anomaly: Main clause phenomenon. The interrogative origin of the con-ditional and its erstwhile syntactic autonomy explains the uninverted subject-verbword order of the matrix clauses immediately following the conditional, as in MHGdaz geschiht () and ich getuo . . . leit (). The uninverted subject-verb word order,which reflects two juxtaposed root clauses, namely interrogative plus declarative, lateryields to the obligatory inversion in Present-Day German, thus indicating that theclausal fusion has been accomplished. An example is the Modern German rendering

Olav Hackstein

of (): Erlaubt mir’s mein Herr, füge ich ihm Leid zu with obligatorily inverted verb-subject-pronoun sequence füge ich.

.... N Q + NR + VR

OHG

. nihil™ne aliud te esse meministi?

né™uuéist--know..

tuyou..

dánneotherwise

díhyou..

îehtsomething

ánderesother..

sin?be.

[ONPQ]

‘Don’t you know you’re nothing else?’ (Notker Nb, Boethius, Cons.)

. ne

magcan..

iuuihyou..

ouhalso

tazthis

irrendisconcert.

na?

[ONPQ]

‘Won’t this disconcert you?’ (Notker Nb, Boethius, Cons.)

It can be observed that negation raising is often a mark of rhetorical questions, inwhich the interrogative negation of a proposition conveys a strong assertion of thesame proposition. It is possible to integrate the phenomenon of interrogative nega-tion reversal into the context of inner and outer negated polar questions. Inner polarquestions involve the neutral questioning of a negated proposition (¬p) with no ex-pectation of either a positive or negative answer on the part of the speaker.

a. Inner negated polar question (INPQ = neutral yes/no question) + low (= post-subject) negation, e.g.

. Is Jane not coming? Possible answers are: Yes, she is./No, she isn’t.

By contrast, outer negated polar questions instantiate the counterexpectational ques-tioning of a negated proposition (¬p), thereby reversing the negation and asking theaddressee for confirmation of the positive proposition.

b. Outer negated polar question (ONPQ = rhetorical question) + high negation,e.g.

. Isn’t Jane coming too? Expected answer: Yes, she is.

For this important distinction, see inter alia Büring and Gunlogson and Har-tung , both of which have elaborated on the possible morphosyntactic differen-tiation of the two types of negative polar question. For instance, Hartung (:)

For OHG Notker ne . . . na, see Lühr :–; on the etymology of OHG na, see ibid. .


points out the formal difference between high and low negation, which formally cor-responds to the outer and inner negated polar question types (= ONPQ, INPQ). Infact, there are diachronic data which support this distinction and suggest that olderIndo-European languages made use of negation fronting in polar interrogatives toformally differentiate outer negation polar questions (= rhetorical questions) frominner negation polar questions.

.... N + NR + VR. Negated conditionals ex-hibit the same word order pattern as negated polar questions. In OHG, the frontednegation ne/ni serves a double function, as negation and conditional complemen-tizer (Schrodt :, ). In fact, the employment of fronted sentential nega-tion as a negated conditional complementizer is common to at least three branchesof Indo-European, being attested in Latin and Tocharian in addition to Germanic(see §§..., ...).

As seen above in () and (), the fronting of negation in polar questions corre-sponds to a pragmatically conditioned option in some of the older-attested Indo-European languages. Negation fronting in polar questions serves (inter alia) to estab-lish contrasting counterexpectational topics, e.g. Don’t you agree? [I hope you DO.] Thislatter function is shared by negated counterfactual conditionals, e.g. if you agree, that’sfine; [if not]ContrFoc, time to start an argument. Here the counterfactual if not allows aparaphrase as a topic-raising question Don’t you agree? It can be hypothesized that thisfunctional overlap of negated polar questions and negated conditionals (expressingcounterexpectation) explains the conflation of negation fronting and counterfactualconditional, which is attested in (older) Gemanic, Latin and Tocharian.

. kuningking

nist--be..

inin

worolti,world

ni

sîbe...

imohe..

thionontiserving

‘There is no king on earth, unless he be a servant of his.’ (O. ..; Schrodt:)

The type of negative conditional with a raised negation (and raised verb) is supersededin Middle High German by conditional SVO clauses with a negated verb, marked byprefixed verbal negation en- followed by the adverb danne, denne ‘otherwise’.

. wirwe

sînbe..

vilvery

ungescheiden,unseparated

ezit

en™tuoNEG--do...

danotherwise

der...

tôtdeath...

‘We firmly stand by you, unless death separates us.’ (Nib. .)

There is a tendency to elide the negation, thereby transferring its negative polarity to denn; cf. theModern German idiom es sei denn ‘were it not that; except if’, and see Paul, Wiehl, and Grosse :f.

Olav Hackstein

However, the raised negation construction persists in old formulae, most prominentlyin the phrase

. OE ne™wæreOHG ni™wâriMHG ne™wære

--be...

‘were it not (that)’

which, by subsequent allegro reduction (MHG niwer, nüwer → niur), yields thePresent-Day German particle nur ‘only, just’, cf. Behaghel /:f. and Paul,Wiehl, and Grosse :.

. LatinThe syntactic convergence in word order of polar questions and conditionals recursin Latin and Tocharian. In contrast to Germanic, however, the raising of the negationand verb in these two languages is not grammaticalized as an obligatory mark of polarquestions, but is rather conditioned by information structure.

.... P Q + VR. In polar questions without the polar question particle--ne (see Hofmann and Szantyr :, Kühner and Stegmann :f.), there isa tendency to raise the verb and the negation, e.g.

Old Latin

. ibogo..

igiturthus

intro?inside

‘Will I thus go inside?’ (Pl. Truc. )

. Prompsistiserve..

tuyou.

illithat.one..

vinum?wine...

‘Did you serve him wine?’ (Pl. Mil. )

However, SOV is also attested, e.g.

. hocthis...

pueriboy...

possunt,can..

viriman...

non

potuerunt?can..

‘Boys are capable of this, and men haven’t been capable of achieving it?’ (Cic.Tusc. .)


.... C + VR (V-C)

. voltis,want.prs.

empta™st;buy.....--..

nolitis,.want.prs.

non

empta™st.buy.....--..

‘You want, she’s bought; you don't want, she’s not bought.’ (Caecil. com. fr. ,Warmington –:.)

. tepeatbe.warm...

satisenough

est..

‘Should [the barrel] be warm, it is sufficient.’ (Cato Agr. .)

.... N Q + NR + VR. The sentence negation non maybe raised to indicate a rhetorical question (Kühner and Stegmann :, ). Thesame applies to the coexisting sentence negation nı in Old Latin (e.g., quid™nı ‘whynot’), which is the standard negation in Oscan and persists in Classical Latin in idiomssuch as nı™mırum ‘no surprise, no wonder’.

. non

tuyou..

tenes?hold..

[ONPQ]

‘Don’t you realize it?’ (Pl. Men. )

Raised non frequently carries a flavor of disapproval and astonishment, as in the fol-lowing examples (Kühner and Stegmann :f.):

. Quid?what

Non

sciuntknow..

ipsiself...

viam?way...

[ONPQ]

‘What? They don’t know the way themselves?’ (Ter. Hec. )

. Non

mi™stI.--..

laternalamp

inin

manu?hand...

[ONPQ]

‘Don’t I hold a lamp in my hand?’ (Pl. Amph. , preceded by nonne ques-tions)

.... N + NR. The same raising is found in Old Latinnegated conditionals with nı(Kühner and Stegmann :f.), e.g.

. siif

into

iuscourt

vocat,call...

ito.go....

‘If somebody summons someone to appear in court, (the defendant) shall go.’

ni

it,go...

antestamino.call.for.witness...

‘If he doesn’t go, they shall call for a witness.’ (Leg. XII. tab. .)

Olav Hackstein

... Anomalies: Latin nı and negation reversal as persistent ONPQ property.Old Latin nı is also used to introduce sentential complements after verbs meaning ‘topledge, bet’ (Kühner and Stegmann :), an anomalous use, since we expect nıto express negation, which it does not here. This is best explained under the assump-tion of a diachronically underlying biased polar question. Biased polar questions scopeover the negation in calling the negation into question, thus reversing the negationinto a strong affirmation. In both examples () and (), it is possible to render thenı-clause as a negated polar question:

. ni

ergoin.fact

matrismother..

filiadaughter..

est[?]..

[ONPQ + NegRaise]

inin

meummy...

nummum,coin...

inin

tuomyour...

talentumtalent...

pignuspledge...

da!give...

‘Isn’t she really her mother’s daughter? Bet a talent for my coin [that she is]. =Bet that she is her mother’s daughter!’ (Pl. Ep. f.)

. dagive...

hercleby.Hercules

pignus,pledge...

ni

meminirecall..

omniaall...

etand

scioknow..

‘Give, by Hercules, your pledge that I recall and know everything.’ (lit. ‘Give,by Hercules, your pledge: Don’t I recall and know everything?’) (Pl. Pers. )

. TocharianIn Tocharian, neither a change in the basic SOV word order nor the use of interrog-ative particles such as Tocharian A assi (, ) and te () is obligatory. Given the ty-pological studies and Indo-European comparanda noted above (§), the default wayof marking polar questions in Tocharian was in all likelihood by intonation (–),which, however, is no longer recoverable from the texts.

..... P Q VR

. pañäkteBuddha.

wateither

yopsa,enter..

nandeNande.

wator

‘Has Buddha or Nanda [just] entered?’ (B HMR b)

. ateaway

kampalcoat.

yamas.astado..

‘Have you put [your] coat away?’ (B a)


. s.erskana,sister..

sethis...

nomiyes.s.ejewel...

bhajam.bowl...

rerinuleave.....

star™me..--you.

epeor

ma

‘Sisters, have you left this jewel-bowl for me or not?’ (B b)

. ynalekelsewhere

te

loaway

kälkgo..

assi

‘Has he gone somewhere else?’ (A b)

. pas.luneprotection

ypamam.do...

wras.älsuffering

slabring..

assi

‘Did I perhaps bring you suffering by providing you protection?’ (A b)

..... P Q + VR. If the verb receives contrastive information focus, asin alternative questions (), or Verum focus (), the verb is raised, e.g.

. kärsanoyem.know..

toyä

theytuthis..

epeor

ma

‘Did they [the animals] know this or not?’ (B af.)

Cf. the contrast with the alternative question in (), where the subject rather thanthe verb is focused and consequently fronted:

. s.arsister.

ckacardaughter.

epeor

säm.wife.

epeor

spaktanikservant.

epeor

ns.äkkI

okilike

lokitguest

kakmuscome.....

nä™m...--.

‘Has she come as the sister, or the daughter, or the wife, or the servant? Or likeme, as a guest?’ (A af.)

. arar™cä

cease..--.

poall

s.a(r)m(a)n(a)cause...

‘Have all causes ceased [to exist]? = Is it true that all causes ceased [to exist]?’(B a)

In Tocharian, both headless conditional clauses and polar questions exhibit pragmat-ically conditioned verb fronting.

..... C VR (SVX/SOV)

. sukyojoy.

yomnas.reach..

ksalune,extinction

mänthow

ma

kackalrejoice..

‘If he happily reaches extinction, why should a giver not rejoice?’ (MSN

[I.] a, JWP f.)

Olav Hackstein

. arkwiwhite

parsiask..

™ne

--.

™ks

--

™arkwi

--whitewatkäs.s.idecide...

‘If somebody asked him about “white”, he would decide “white”.’ (B b)

. s.uwisas.uwi.

yamäm.do..

nanoagain

kartsegood

‘If he does it with s.uwi, it is also good.’ (B Fill. Y b)

..... C + VR (V-C)

. smeñc™atscome..--

daks.inakıreceiver-of-alms..

tmäkthen

korpactogether

ys.™ämgo..--.

‘When the receivers of alms arrive, he goes to meet them.’ (A YQ[III.]b)

..... N Q + NR + SOV. In negated polar questions, Tochar-ian shows a tendency to front the negation alone, leaving the verb in sentence-finalposition, e.g.

. tämneso

ma

te

näs.I

s.ma(wa)sit..

[ONPQ]

‘Wasn’t I sitting like that?’ (A b)

. ma

te

tamthen

ñiI.

s.tmostand.....

[ONPQ]

‘Didn’t he then stand by me?’ (A a)

..... N Q + NR + VR. Alternatively, both the negationand the verb may be raised, especially if the verb is under constrastive focus as inalternative questions, as in (–) (A-not-A construction, see Siemund :).

. snewithout

klopsuffering

ma

t[e]

pkateintend...

tuyou..

arkisos.iworld

lutkässibecome....

[ONPQ]

‘Didn’t you intend to free the world from suffering?’ (A a)

. mäm. thow

nunow

tsitimtouch..

talomiserable.

näs.I

ma

te

tsinamtouch..

[ONPQ]

‘How could I the miserable one touch it?’ Or don’t I touch it? (A b– a)


. cämpälbe.able..

te

nasam..

cesämthis..

wrasassibeing..

wasterefuge

mäskatsi,be.

ma

te

cämpälbe.able..

(na)

sam..

[ONPQ]

‘Am I able to provide refuge to the beings, or am I not able?’ (A b)

..... N C + NR + SOV

. ma

s.päand

akalkwish.

knellefulfill.

star™ñ..--.

‘and if the wish cannot be fulfilled for me’ (B a)

The following example, the syntactic parsing of which has been a matter of contro-versy, is best subsumed under the same conditional construction, as exemplified be-low:

. ma

(t)e

natäkmaster

camthis..

bra[mam. ]Brahman

e[pe]or

ma

(t)e

was.

entsaträ,keep...

waswe

nunow

tamne-wkäm. nyothus

natkismaster..

yäsluntassälenemy..

ma

cämplyebe.able...

[na]s[amäs..

cam.this.

ypeyam.country.

mäskatsi]be.

‘Does the master not keep this Brahman or does he not keep us? [Regardless ofthis,] we will not be capable of staying in this country thus, with such enemiesof the master.’ (A bf.)

. ma

nwnow

ayu™negive..--.

mäktehow

yam.go.sbjv..

(päst)(away)

. . .

. . .aikreempty

wrotsegreat

rs.akesage

‘But if I don’t give him [alms], how should the great sage go away empty[-handed]?’ (B af.; cf. Sieg and Siegling :, Peyrot :.)

..... N C + NR + VR

. kattsihow

nonow

wnolmebeing...

saterich

mäsketräbe..

ma

cäñcan™nebe.pleased..--.

s.päand

ayorgift

aitsi?give..

‘How can a being be rich, and not be pleased to give alms? = How can a beingbe rich, if it doesn’t take pleasure in giving alms?’ (BK a)

Cf. the rendering by Thomas : as an indirect interrogative: “Ob der Herr diesen Brahmanenoder uns behält . . . ”

Olav Hackstein

ConclusionLatin, Hittite and Tocharian almost certainly made use of intonation to mark po-lar questions, leaving preverbal negation and SOV intact, but raised the negationand verb if these constituents were assigned information focus. Focusing the nega-tion in interrogatives is employed inter alia to express outer negative polar ques-tions (ONPQ, rhetorical questions). Thus in Latin, raising the negation non in po-lar questions is typically associated with rhetorical questions (Kühner and Stegmann:, ). Likewise, Hittite tends to front the negation natta in rhetorical ques-tions (Hoffner :f., Hoffner and Melchert :f.). Vedic also often attestsa contrast between non-rhetorical inner negated polar questions without NegRaisingand rhetorical outer negated questions with NegRaising, cf. e.g.

. a. kath´aHow

gr´amam.village...

ná

p ˚rcchasi?ask..

[INPQ, non-rhet. Q - NegRaise]

‘Why do you not ask for the village?’ (RV ..c; Etter :)b. ná

tvayou..

bh´ırfear.

ivalike

vindatım. ?grip..

[ONPQ, rhet. Q + NegRaise]

‘Doesn’t something like fear grip you?’ (RV ..d; ibid.)

In sum, the interrogative origin of the headless conditionals, along with the focus-driven negation raising in polar interrogatives, explains both cross-linguistic phenom-ena, namely,

• the tendency to front negation and verb in conditionals (semantic and prag-matic focus in polar questions);

• the tendency of the negation to occupy the complementizer position in neg-ative conditionals, and the conflation of conditional negation and conditionalcomplementizer (Germanic, Latin, Tocharian);

and language-specific peculiarities of headless conditionals, which may be explainedas persistent properties of the diachronically underlying polar questions:

• the Aux-S-Neg-V pattern in English V-conditionals (§.);

• main clause phenomena in the OHG and MHG V-conditionals (conditionalplus independent matrix clause) (§...); and

• the occurrence of Latin negated nı as an affirmative complementizer with verbsof betting and pledging (§..).


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