Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.17234/Croatica.42.10
About Complex Sentences with Alternative Unconditional Clauses
Ismail Palić
orcid.org/0000-0002-9128-236X
; Faculty of Philosophy, University of Sarajevo, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Abstract
Complex sentences with alternative unconditional clauses are a particular structural-semantic type in Bosnian. There are many points which alternative unconditional clauses have in common with conditional as well as conditional-concessive clauses, but there are also very significant differences between them. Semantically, such clauses “unconditionalize” the content of the main (the host) clause, which means that what is denoted by the main clause will happen regardless of the circumstances denoted by dependent clauses. They contain two key implications: (1) the exhaustiveness implication, which means that all the options in a given context are exhausted and that all of them are equally possible, and (2) the indifference implication, which means that the speaker is indifferent to which of the options could be realized. Syntactilly, complex sentences with alternative unconditional clauses prototypically consist of the main clause as well as two coordinated dependent clauses which are mutually disjunctive alternative. There can be more than two unconditional clauses. There is a significant structural variability of such sentences, so that they have conjuncts “bilo… bilo/ili…” and “bilo da… bilo/ili da…”, but very often they are connected to the main clause asyndetically (without conjuncts). The asyndetic connections could be syntactically headed (ie. with the syntactic head which serves as semantic intensifier and/or unconditionality verifier) or headless. Alternative unconditional clauses share significant structural-semantic features with alternative questions. The unconditionality verifiers (“svejedno”, “bez obzira (na to)” etc.) syntactically choose interrogative clauses, which also could be used as headless. Moreover, alternative questions and alternative unconditional clauses share the same intonational pattern (high tone + falling low tone). The predicates of unconditional clauses very often (say prototypically) have morphological form of the free active participle. All the predicates, regardless of their morphological form, are syntactically conditionals (ie. the possibility mood). Finally, alternative unconditional clauses have very important pragmatic function. They are used by the speaker to avoid opening the question/topic which has been suggested by the interlocutor. The speaker doesn’t take attitude towards the opened question, he ignores it and informs the interlocutor that, no matter what his opinion is, the question opened in the main clause in more important.
Keywords
unconditional clause; disjunction; alternation; indifference; exhaustiveness; conditional clause; concessive clause
Hrčak ID:
206748
URI
Publication date:
30.10.2018.
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