Adverbial clause combining in Latgalian

Abstract

This paper investigates techniques of clause combining in spoken Latgalian, based on a corpus of 5 hours of recorded interviews with eleven speakers from different parts of Latgalia (Eastern Latvia). The study focuses on inter-clausal relations that are most typically expressed by adverbial clauses and in grammars of European languages are largely associated with adverbial subordinators such as English when, if, because, or although. In spoken Latgalian these relations are most often marked by a combination of lexical, grammatical and prosodic features. Patterns described in detail include asyndetic constructions with grammatical marking, clause chaining, clause combining with semantically vague or polysemous connectives, and correlative constructions. The study calls for a broad understanding of adverbial clause combining, without recourse to the problematic concept of subordination and without assuming the complex sentence as a syntactic or textual unit. Such an approach is needed to pay justice to the intricate structures of fluent speech.