Adverbial clauses in Veracruz Huasteca Nahuatl from a functional-typological approach

Abstract

This paper analyses adverbial clauses in Veracruz Huasteca Nahuatl (vhn), a Uto-Aztecan language spoken in Mexico. We argue that the formal properties of adverbial clauses in vhn are motivated by general functional principles, particularly, their semantic values. We address seven semantic relations: temporal precedence, temporal subsequence, temporal simultaneity, cause/reason, purpose, result, and spatial relations. We support the analysis not only with evidence from vhn, but also from other languages of the world where two morphosyntactic devices are important: adverbial conjunctions and tam morphology. Our main claim is that the different semantic relations encoded within adverbial clauses take on specific formal mechanisms to express those particular communicative situations.