Incipient grammaticalization of a redundant purpose clause marker in Lamunxin Ėven: Contact-induced change or independent innovation?

• Main Author: Pakendorf, Brigitte
• Other Authors: Dynamique Du Langage (DDL), Université Lumière - Lyon 2 (UL2)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), In Martine Robbeets, Hubert Cuyckens
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2013
• Subjects: Lamunkhin; Even; Tungusic; Turkic; Siberia; speech verb; [SHS.LANGUE]Humanities and Social Sciences/Linguistics; Sakha; Yakut
• Online Access: https://hal.univ-lyon2.fr/hal-02012636; https://hal.univ-lyon2.fr/hal-02012636/document; https://hal.univ-lyon2.fr/hal-02012636/file/Pakendorf_2013_Purposive.pdf

International audience When languages that are known to be in contact share features, it is often a simple conclusion that these must be due to contact-induced developments. However, such a conclusion needs to be substantiated with careful analysis of crosslinguistic data. This approach will be demonstrated with a case study of an innovation in the Lamunxin dialect of the Tungusic language Ėven. This dialect, which is under strong contact pressure from the Turkic language Sakha (Yakut), is developing a purpose clause marker out of a converb of the generic verb of speech which is structurally parallel to a Sakha purposive construction. Notwithstanding the crosslinguistic frequency of this construction, detailed analysis supports the role of contact in its development in Lamunxin Ėven.