Temporal Clauses Research Articles

The Translation of Biblical Hebrew Clauses with ‮בְּ‬ / ‮כְּ‬ + Construct Infinitive in Targum Onqelos

‭The following article discusses Jewish Aramaic translations of the typical Biblical Hebrew constructions ‮‮בְּ‬‬ / ‮‮כְּ‬‬ + construct infinitive, which are usually translated with temporal clauses in English. In the Aramaic translations a variety of possible translations is attested. This study uncovers some of the principles which guided the translator(s) of Targum Onqelos in their choices. The discussion will be narrowed down to the representative examples of Genesis, since the evidence in Exod.–Deut. largely agrees with that found in Genesis. Finally, I will briefly refer to Targum Jonathan and the Palestinian Targumim.‬

Switch-attention (aka switch-reference) in South-American temporal clauses: facilitating oral transmission

Cultures without a written tradition depend entirely on the oral channel to transmit sometimes highly complex information. It is therefore not surprising that in the languages of such cultures linguistic devices evolve that enhance textual coherence, and thus comprehension. These devices should ideally also be economical in terms of morphosyntactic complexity in order to facilitate both production and comprehension. In this paper, I will argue that switch-attention (a term preferred over the traditional switch-reference) systems in temporal clauses fulfill these requirements of cohesion and complexity reduction, making them particularly apt for orally transmitting texts. Moreover, switch-reference systems seem to diffuse relatively easily. These features taken together are suggested to be (partly) responsible for the widely attested phenomenon in areas without a lengthy written tradition.

On Conditionals in the Greek Pentateuch: A Study of Translation Syntax (review)

Reviewed by: On Conditionals in the Greek Pentateuch: A Study of Translation Syntax Robert J. V. Hiebert On Conditionals in the Greek Pentateuch: A Study of Translation Syntax. By Anwar Tjen. LHBOTS 515. Pp. xvi + 267. New York: T & T Clark, 2010. Cloth, $120.00. This study by Anwar Tjen is the published version of his 2003 Cambridge University Ph.D. thesis (p. xi). As the title makes clear, it involves an investigation of conditional constructions in the Greek Pentateuch. In his introduction, Tjen indicates that he "takes seriously the double character of LXX Greek, both as a translation from Hebrew and as vernacular Greek" (p. 2). His focus is primarily on bipartite conditionals ("if... then"), though other constructions that can be interpreted conditionally (e.g., paratactic, indefinite relative, and temporal clauses) are also investigated (p. 3). In setting the stage for his analysis, Tjen surveys previous studies on conditionals in the LXX by the likes of James Sterenberg, Klaus Beyer, Frederick Conybeare and St. George Stock, Karl Huber, Anneli Aejmelaeus, Timothy Schehr, and Seppo Sipilä, but concludes that "as yet there has been no extensive treatment of the topic from the viewpoint of the study of translation syntax" (p. 7). The primary texts upon which he bases his response to this desideratum are the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible contained in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and the critical editions of the books of the Greek Pentateuch prepared by John William Wevers for the Göttingen Septuaginta series. He does, however, also consult the Samaritan Pentateuch, Qumran biblical materials, the so-called Cambridge Septuagint prepared by Alan Brooke and Norman McLean, and the Septuagint Handausgabe edited by Alfred Rahlfs. In chapter 1, Tjen surveys Hebrew conditional constructions of various types and discusses three major proposals with respect to their taxonomy by Samuel Driver, C. van Leeuwen, and Galia Hatav. He concludes that the basic distinction made by many grammarians between "lower hypotheticality (real condition)" and "higher hypotheticality (unreal condition)" is a "feasible" one, and that it is not necessary to multiply categories of Hebrew conditionals as some like Driver and van Leeuwen have done (pp. 12, 14, 25-27, 32). Chapter 2 is concerned with the analysis of Greek conditionals, "focusing on the system in Koine, but taking into account as well diachronic changes from the Classical system from which it is derived" (p. 33). In addition to providing an overview of the types of collocations of conditional markers and associated verb forms that are attested in Hellenistic Greek, Tjen discusses a number of proposals for the classification of such constructions: William Goodwin's time-oriented system; Basil Gildersleeve's mood-oriented system; James Boyer's inductive "class" system of New Testament conditionals; Jan Gonda's attitudinal semantics system (adopted by Stanley [End Page 391] Porter); Frederic Farrar's degrees of probability approach; and Richard Young's system based on speech act theory, which takes into account both the propositional content and the illocutionary force of communicative events. In the end, Tjen adapts the attitudinal semantics approach of Gonda and Porter in classifying Greek conditionals: 1. Unmarked or neutral condition; 2. Counterfactual condition; 3. Projection; 4. Projection with contingency for fulfillment (pp. 66-67). In chapter 3, Tjen focuses on the ways that LXX translators treat Hebrew constructions as conditionals in the Pentateuch, documenting both overtly marked constructions (the majority of which are introduced by either אם or כי) and unmarked ones (e.g., a few paratactic constructions and attributive participles). In the process, he points out the various ways that these renderings evince the hermeneutical activity of the translators. Chapter 4 deals with Hebrew conditional syntagms that contain yiqtol or yiqtol-weqatal in the protasis. Most of these constructions in the Greek Pentateuch appear in legal-instructional material, though some are found in contexts that Tjen labels "interactive," a term that he does not actually define but that seems to pertain to conversational situations. In either case, the Greek translational equivalent in the majority of cases is ἐάν + subjunctive. A much less frequently attested Greek counterpart is εἰ + indicative, which is found only in "interactive material." Non-finite equivalents (participles, infinitives) for the Hebrew verbs in such constructions in the legal-instructional material...

Switch-attention (aka switch-reference) in South-American temporal clauses: facilitating oral transmission

Cultures without a written tradition depend entirely on the oral channel to transmit sometimes highly complex information. It is therefore not surprising that in the languages of such cultures linguistic devices evolve that enhance textual coherence, and thus comprehension. These devices should ideally also be economical in terms of morphosyntactic complexity in order to facilitate both production and comprehension. In this paper, I will argue that switch-attention (a term preferred over the traditional switch-reference) systems in temporal clauses fulfill these requirements of cohesion and complexity reduction, making them particularly apt for orally transmitting texts. Moreover, switch-reference systems seem to diffuse relatively easily. These features taken together are suggested to be (partly) responsible for the widely attested phenomenon in areas without a lengthy written tradition.

A Corpus-based Analysis of Clause Ordering in English Complex Sentences

This study is a corpus-based analysis of ordering patterns of adverbial and main clauses in written and spoken English. The previous studies indicated that conditional clauses tend to precede the main clause more frequently than temporal clauses, and that temporal clauses are more frequently in the sentence-initial position than causal clauses. This study aims to present a more comprehensive picture for the usages of 13 adverbial clauses. The data are from LOB representing written English and parts of BNC representing spoken English. The corpus analysis shows that till-, until-, and before-clauses representing Time before follow the main clause most frequently among temporal clauses, but that as-clauses representing Same time precede the main clause frequently. Because- clauses show a strong tendency to occur sentence-finally, and causal as-clauses follow the main verb much more frequently particularly in spoken English. If-clauses tend to occur in the sentence-initial position, whereas unless- and though-clauses tend to be in the final position. Considered an informal variant of although-clauses, though-clauses are used frequently in written English, showing a preference for the final position in both written and spoken English. The ordering patterns are explained in terms of the principles of iconicity, processing, and information structure. Pedagogically, this study suggests that teaching materials should be developed for Korean learners of English based on these objective results of the corpus data in order to enhance the correct use of adverbial and main clauses in complex sentences.

Curious Legal Conditionals

The paper examines the use of the modal verb SHALL in the if clauses of conditionals found in legal English. The study traces the history of such usages and compares them to two uses of WILL attested in the same grammatical environment: a temporal use and a nonepistemic modal use. The comparison provides the foundation for examining the use of SHALL in Biblical translations, where this verb has outlived its demise in general English, and both of these sources inform the analysis of SHALL in legal conditionals. Specifically, it is claimed that SHALL is not inherently deontic in legal English but is used as an explicit marker of the authority vested in the author or authors of spoken and written texts. This approach explains why authority conscious drafters can use SHALL in the if clauses of conditionals and in temporal clauses whenever they want to and why the proponents of the plain language movement advocate simply deleting SHALL from legal writing and not replacing it with more popular modals expressing deontic meanings, e.g. HAVE TO, MUST, etc. It is claimed that no such replacements are recommended because there is no deontic meaning to replace and the authority designated by SHALL can be inferred from the context.

On the temporal interpretation of Japanese temporal clause

The interpretation of Japanese temporal clauses depends on an intricate interplay between a number of factors including, in addition to the temporal connective, the tense and aspectual properties of the embedded clause as well as the matrix clause. This paper presents a detailed survey of these interactions and a model-theoretic compositional analysis which improves significantly over previous proposals in terms of attention to empirical detail and internal simplicity.

Prijungiamieji laiko sakiniai su ribos reikšmės jungiamaisiais žodžiais 16–17 a. lietuviškuose raštuose

SUBORDINATE CLAUSES OF TIME BOUNDARY IN OLD LITHUANIAN WRITINGS Summary The article gives an overview of the structure and semantics of subordinate clauses of time boundary with conjunctions net , neg , kol , iki in Old Lithuanian writings (in texts of J. Bretkūnas’ Postilla (1591), M. Dauksa’s Postilla (1599) and K. Sirvydas’ Punktai sakymų (I – 1629, II – 1644). The comparative analysis of the material shows that the temporal conjunction net has a peculiarity to fit semantically with one of the other conjunctions of time limit or boundary ( iki , kol , neg ). The closeness of meaning between the conjunctions net and iki , net and kol , net and negu depends on the grammatical structure of the complex sentence. Temporal clauses with conjunctions net have a fixed final clause order, clauses with iki are also often (~88%) used in the final position. The temporal clauses introduced by con­junctions net , iki can include finite and / or non-finite verb forms. Temporal clauses with net and correlative word of duration taip ilgai show the closeness of meaning between the conjunctions net and kol . The tendency to change conjunction net to conjunction kol is seen in temporal clauses with the subjunctive. There is also a semantic similarity between temporal clauses with net (together with correlative word pirm ) and temporal clauses with neg . Temporal clauses with compound conjunction pirm neg are most frequent in all these texts, temporal clauses introduced by single conjunction neg are identified in Dauksa and Sirvydas. In most cases a correlation between clause order and iconicity is seen: ~72% of grand total of subordinate clauses of time boundary used in Bretkūnas’, Dauksa’s and Sirvydas’ writings are the posterior temporal clauses.

NPI licensing in temporal clauses

This paper offers a systematic semantically-based approach to NPI licensing in temporal clauses based on Beaver and Condoravdi (2003, in progress). It motivates the presuppositional nature of temporal clauses and shows how temporal ordering induces an ordering of semantic strength in each case. The proposed analysis is uniform across veridical and non-veridical readings of before and brings under the semantic fold seemingly exceptional or pragmatically-based cases of NPI licensing observed with after, since and until. Crucial throughout is the more restricted, presupposition-dependent notion of entailment, Strawson entailment, proposed by von Fintel (1999). The paper also relates Strawson entailment to the alternative-based analysis of NPIs by Krifka (1995), proposing a particular kind of contextual update, Strawson update, for calculating informational strength.

Before and After without coercion: comment on the paper by Cleo Condoravdi

The following contribution was inspired by Cleo Condoravdi’s article on NPI licensing in temporal clauses (Condoravdi 2010). Condoravdi gives a coherent and comprehensive account of before which crucially involves coercion of propositions to the earliest or maximal times at which the propositions are true, and a modal component for non-factual interpretations. I argue for a non-modal, non-coercive analysis of clauses like [A before B] as ‘A is the case when B has not been the case’, triggering a conversational implicature that B will be the case later. I will also discuss temporal operators involving measure phrases, like three hours before.

The Movement Derivation of Conditional Clauses

By analogy with the movement analysis of temporal clauses, some authors have proposed that conditional clauses be derived by leftward operator movement (Bhatt and Pancheva 2002, 2006, Arsenijević 2009, Tomaszewicz 2009). This movement analysis of conditional clauses is shown to account for the incompatibility of main clause phenomena and conditional clauses in terms of intervention effects. The cartographic implementation of this analysis predicts that conditional clauses will be incompatible with speaker-oriented modal expressions and that conditional clauses will lack the low-construal reading found in temporal clauses (Bhatt and Pancheva 2002, 2006). Thus, the absence of low construal in conditional clauses, which was initially taken to be an obstacle for the movement account of conditional clauses (see Citko 2000), becomes an argument in its favor.

The iconicity assumption and the functional distribution of English temporal adverbial clauses: A textual perspective

Based on an analysis of a large group of preposed English finite temporal adverbial clauses (TACs), the present study reveals that a considerable number of them do not serve as a thematic link between preceding discourse and their main clause, which suggests that the characterization of their discourse function on the basis of this link is inadequate. Focusing on their shared role in maintaining the temporal line in narrative discourse, the study proposes to view their use as motivated by an effort to collaborate with the general strategy preferred by language users for comprehending temporal information as suggested by the iconicity assumption. From this point of view, the motivation for using TACs in a preposed position is to override the reader's iconicity assumption by specifying the temporal relationship between the main clause and preceding discourse. Serving this function makes preposed TACs part of the chain of temporal adverbials forming the temporal line of a narrative. In accordance with this understanding of preposed TACs, their postposed counterparts are seen as playing a complementary role—they are used in a postposed position when their temporal information is needed without interfering with the temporal line of a narrative.

In the wrong mood at the right time: Children’s acquisition of the Spanish subjunctive in temporal clauses

AbstractThis study investigates the complexity of the mapping task in children’s acquisition of the Spanish subjunctive in temporal clauses. We consider that children’s difficulty with this task arises from the interaction between mood and other elements determining the evaluation of the temporal clause, such as semantic factors, tense, and cognition. Forty monolingual Spanish-speaking children first completed a cognitive assessment test, evaluating false belief understanding; this was followed by a linguistic prerequisite test assessing understanding of temporal connectors and knowledge of subjunctive morphology, and finally a temporal clause production task. Results reveal that mood selection in temporal clauses does not simply start with indicative followed by its replacement by subjunctive. On the contrary, the use of subjunctive temporal clauses involves a complex process for children in which tense corresponds to a fundamental source of bootstrapping. These results confirm the view that the acquisition of mood selection undergoes a protracted development. Spanish subjunctive meanings are not immediately accessible to children.

Two Types of Temporal When Clauses in Hausa

Hausa has simple temporal clauses, introduced by the conjunction dà ‘when’, that many researchers derive from temporal relative clauses introduced by lookàcin dà ‘time that’, through the deletion of the pseudo head word lookàcii ‘time’. This paper shows that this analysis, however natural it may appear, is inadequate. Indeed, the two temporal clauses have different uses, which would not be surprising if simple temporal clauses are derivationally independent from temporal relative clauses, as proposed in this paper

Iconicity of sequence: A corpus-based analysis of the positioning of temporal adverbial clauses in English

Recent work in functional and cognitive linguistics has argued and pre- sented evidence that the positioning of adverbial clauses is motivated by competing pressures from syntactic parsing, discourse pragmatics, and se- mantics. Continuing this line of research, the current paper investigates the eect of the iconicity principle on the positioning of temporal adverbial clauses. The iconicity principle predicts that the linear ordering of main and subordinate clauses mirrors the sequential ordering of the events they describe. Drawing on corpus data from spoken and written English, the pa- per shows that, although temporal clauses exhibit a general tendency to fol- low the main clause, there is a clear correlation between clause order and iconicity: temporal clauses denoting a prior event precede the main clause more often than temporal clauses of posteriority. In addition to the iconicity principle, there are other factors such as length, complexity, and pragmatic import that may aect the positioning of temporal adverbial clauses. Using logistic regression analysis, the paper investigates the eects of the various factors on the linear structuring of complex sentences.

An Examination of Synoptic Portions within the Vulgate

AbstractIn this article, the author compares the synoptic portions of Samuel/Kings and Chronicles within the Vulgate (i.e. examining Jerome's treatment of Hebrew temporal clauses, conjunctions, particles, word order, along with his omissions and additions) and considers those results in light of the remaining books of the Vulgate Old Testament. It is argued that Jerome became demonstrably less dependent upon the ancient versions and introduced innovations of translation theretofore unseen. This increasing sensitivity to Hebrew syntax reflected in the Vulgate of Chronicles and elsewhere would likewise suggest an increase in Jerome's knowledge and proficiency with regard to the Hebrew language.

Conjunctive Reduction and its Origin: A Comparative Study of Tsou, Amis, and Squliq Atayal

This paper discusses the issue of how coordinate structures evolve into subordinate structures in both syntactic and semantic terms. I call this type of process "conjunctive reduction." It is well established in the literature on Chinese historical syntax that some modifier-head and verb-complement compounds actually derive from coordinate structures in Ancient Chinese. Based on this finding, I suggest that a similar process is also at work in Formosan languages, but on a quite different scale. That is, while Chinese encodes conjunctive reduction in compounding morphology, the same process involves full-fledged syntactic operations in Formosan languages. I propose that there are two general directions of conjunctive reduction. On the one hand, the coordinator may become a modifier marker, where the first conjunct becomes a marked adverbial; then the modifier marker may disappear completely, making the first conjunct an unmarked adverbial. I call this "adverbialization." On the other hand, the coordinator may become a complementizer, introducing either an infinitive complement or an adverbial adjunct such as a conditional or temporal clause. I take Squliq Atayal, Tsou, and Amis to represent the Northern, Tsouic, and Paiwanic groups respectively, which in turn points to the existence of a protolanguage with extensive coordinate construals along the line of Neo-Davidsonian semantics, very much like Ancient Chinese.

La instrucción basada en el procesamiento frente al enfoque ecléctico para el aprendizaje del subjuntivo en la enseñanza de E/LE

The objective of the present research is twofold. First of all, we study the effects of classroom formal instruction; secondly, we evaluate the effects of a formfocused input-based approach, processing instruction (PI), versus the effects of a formfocused output-based approach, eclectic approach (EE). Participants included three sections: one section assigned to PI, one section assigned to EE, one section comprising a control group. Instruction lasted 5 days and targeted Spanish mood selection in temporal clauses. Results reveal similar gains for both approaches.

L’assertion et l’inversion du sujet nominal dans les subordonnées adverbiales

In this article we show that the distribution of nominal inversion is not the same in all types of embedded adverbial clauses. We present a new descriptive generalization according to which the appearance of postverbal subjects must necessarily be favoured by the presence of a spatio-temporal topic or an indication of the subject’s focal interpretation in asserted clauses (including concessive and causal clauses), but not in non-asserted clauses (including temporal, comparative and final clauses and embedded clauses beginning with sans que). We argue that the factors which must necessarily be present to license nominal inversion in asserted clauses indicate that the subject is not interpreted as the topic with respect to which the clause is asserted. In non-asserted clauses, the postverbal subject can never be interpreted as the topic with respect to which the clause is asserted, and no additional factors are needed for nominal inversion to be acceptable.

The Information Structure of Adverbial Clauses in Chinese Discourse

This study investigated adverbial clauses in spoken as well as written Chinese discourse. The adverbial clauses in the spoken data were categorized into (ⅰ) initial clauses that occur in the initial position with respect to their linked material across continuing intonation, (ⅱ) final clauses that occur in the final position with respect to their linked material across continuing intonation, and (ⅲ) final clauses that occur in the final position with respect to their linked material across final intonation. Those in the written data were classified into (ⅰ) initial and (ⅱ) final clauses that occur in the initial or final position, respectively, with respect to their main clauses. An analysis of the spoken and written data shows that the temporal, conditional, and concessive clauses tend to occur before their linked material/main clause, but that the causal clauses are quite different from the other adverbial clauses. Specifically, the causal clauses commonly appear in the final position with respect to their associated material in the spoken data, while the initial and final causal clauses are nearly evenly distributed in the written data. The data suggest that temporal, conditional, and concessive clauses, like topics, are presupposed parts of their sentences; i.e., all of them may be thought of as establishing frameworks for the interpretation of propositions that follow, which seem to be prototypically textual in their functioning. By contrast, causal clauses in Chinese are noticeably distinct from other adverbial clauses not only in spoken data, but also in written data; they play interactional as well as textual roles in discourse linking.