Natural languages exist that use exclusively asyndetic coordination
the verdict
INSUFFICIENT LEANING
refutedsupported
the weight of evidence
5 sources for · 0 against
The retrieved evidence indicates that asyndetic coordination and conjunction-less juxtaposition occur in certain natural languages or historical stages (such as Khanty or Brahui), but the literature does not establish the existence of natural languages that use exclusively asyndetic coordination.
In a coordination construction, which is universally available, two or more syntactic constituents are combined, with or without an overt coordinator. This Element examines how coordinate structures are derived syntactically, focussing on the syntactic operations involved, including constraints on both their operations and the representations they produce. Specifically, considering the recent research development in the syntax of coordination, the Element discusses whether any special syntactic operation is required to derive various coordinate constructions, including constructions in which each conjunct has a gap, whether there is any special functional category heading coordinate constructions in general, what the morphosyntactic statuses of coordinators (i.e., conjunctions and disjunctions) are in some specific languages, whether the structure of a coordinate construction can be beyond the binary complementation structure, and whether the mobility of conjuncts and the mobility of elements in conjuncts require any construction-specific constraint on syntactic operations.
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Prior to widespread contact with Russian, Khanty (Uralic; Finno-Ugric) did not have overt conjunctions or phrasal
coordination. Instead, Khanty texts from the late 19th–early 20th centuries only include examples of conjunction-less clausal juxtaposition,
which was used for both clausal and phrasal coordination. By comparing Khanty texts over the 20th century, we trace the emergence of overt
conjunctions and coordination of phrasal constituents. We show that overt conjunctions first appeared in the context of clausal
coordination, followed by coordination of smaller phrases. Based on novel elicitation data, we demonstrate that, in contemporary Khanty, (i)
overt conjunctions are commonplace, (ii) coordinated clausal constituents may be derived via phrasal coordination or clausal coordination
with conjunction reduction/ellipsis, but (iii) ellipsis of syntactic heads is banned (nouns & postpositions) or dispreferred (verbs).
Based on this diachronic picture, we conclude that the coordination of phrasal constituents only emerged in Khanty once overt conjunctions
became available. We derive this correlation from the Maximize On-line Processing principle (Hawkins
2004), and show that this maxim, usually invoked in the context of speech planning and production, can be successfully applied to
modelling language change.
In this paper I comprehensively discuss the syntactic phenomenon of coordination in Nkami, an endangered, less known Guang (Kwa, Niger-Congo) language of Ghana, based on synchronic natural data. I discuss issues including Nkami’s coordination strategies, its number and types of coordinators, morpho-phonological make-up and distributional abilities of the coordinators, allowable types of syntactic structures for coordination, and the semantic effect(s) of the coordinators on coordinate structures. In addition, some constraints governing Nkami’s coordination, and the multi-functionality and source concepts of the coordinators are also discussed. Among other things, it is observed that Nkami employs both syndetic (overt) and asyndetic (covert) strategies for coordination though the latter is highly restricted, occurring chiefly in narratives and pithy sayings. Nkami employs a Serial Adjective Construction (or an asyndetic) strategy when modifiers (adjectives) in a sentence modify the same referent, while a Coordinate Adjective Construction (or a syndetic) strategy is used when the modifiers qualify different referents within the same sentence. Like regional languages, Nkami has clearly distinct and -coordinators for phrasal and clausal coordination. Lastly, almost all the coordinators in Nkami are multi-functional, and are diachronically derivable from more lexical or less grammatical concepts.
The Curious Case of the Vanished Coordinative Conjunction in Neo-Assyrian | Journal of the American Society for Premodern Asia Main Article Content Øyvind Bjøru Na'ama Pat-El Keywords Abstract While most Akkadian dialects use two coordinators, a phrase and clause level u= and a clause level =ma, in the Neo-Assyrian period both are mostly missing from native Assyrian texts. Not only is lack of overt coordination exceptional among the Semitic languages, cross-linguistically asyndeton is a rare strategy, only attested in languages with no writing tradition. In this paper, we will concentrate on u=.
We sketch the various environments where u= is no longer used in Neo-Assyrian and consider what other strategies are used to mark coordination in this dialect. Finally, we propose a diachronic path to explain which processes contributed to the loss of the coordinator u=. Abstract 410 | PDF Downloads 12 Article Sidebar Requires Subscription or Fee PDF (USD 30) Published June 16, 2024 DOI: https://doi.org/10.7817/jaos.144.2.2024.ar012 Article Details How to Cite The Curious Case of the Vanished Coordinative Conjunction in Neo-Assyrian. (2024). Journal of the American Society for Premodern Asia , 144 (2), 323–338.
https://doi.org/10.7817/jaos.144.2.2024.ar012 More Citation Formats ACM ACS APA ABNT Chicago Harvard IEEE MLA Turabian Vancouver AMA Issue Vol. 144 No. 2 (2024): JAOS Section Articles Information For Readers For Authors For Librarians Language English Browse EDITOR-IN-CHIEF PERI BEARMAN Harvard University ASSOCIATE EDITORS GARY BECKMAN University of Michigan STEPHANIE W. JAMISON University of California, Los Angeles THOMAS MAZANEC University of Calfornia Santa Barbara × Modal Header Close
Abstract While most Dravidian languages form conditional clauses using conditional participles or conjunctions, Brahui frequently employs asyndetic conditionals, which lack conditional participles, conjunctions, and a special pitch pattern. Our study of a Brahui corpus, which consists of novels and folktales, reveals that past, subjunctive, imperfect, and past conditional verbs appear in the protasis, each signalling different types of supposition. Since asyndeton is a normal way of expressing ‘and’ and ‘then’ in Brahui, the tense or mood of the verb in the protasis is the sole marker of the asyndetic conditional clauses, with conditional interpretation arising from pragmatic inference. This chapter also compares Brahui conditionals with those in two related Dravidian languages, Kuṛux and Malto, as well as Balochi. It highlights that asyndetic conditionals are found in languages that permit asyndeton and suggests the possibility that Brahui asyndetic conditionals have developed as an areal feature.
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