The Evolution of a Coordinator From a Vocative Source: The Case of the Disjunctive <i>Ja</i>: In Jordanian Arabic

Abstract

The development of coordinators (conjunctions) into other functional categories, such as discourse markers, is one of the main concerns in language change and grammaticalization studies. However, the evolution of coordinators themselves has gained little attention. This research paper is an investigation to the development of a disjunctive coordinator in Jordanian Arabic (JA), namely, ja:. It is also to explore its containing bisyndetic coordinating construction. It is shown in this paper that the source of this disjunctive coordinator is the vocative ja:. Synchronic evidence to this proposal is that the vocative particle and its disjunctive counterpart share some meaningful and functional grounds, and the disjunctiveja: is not found in all Arabic varieties, unlike the vocative counterpart. It is also argued in this paper that what licensed the grammaticalization of the vocative particle into a disjunctive coordinator in JA is that it co-exists with the disjunctive ʔimma in the bisyndetic disjunctive construction ja: ʔimma X ja: ʔimma Y ‘either X or Y’. However, it is optional to drop both ʔimma’s from the construction, whereas it is impermissible to drop ja: . This obligatory preservation indicates that ja: is the integral part of this bisyndetic disjunctive construction in the grammar of JA. Additionally, it is demonstrated that the development of the coordinating ja: is a case of secondary grammaticalization featured by expansion in functionality.