Multiclausal Causal Constructions in Slovak

Abstract

The article proposes a typological description of the most common causal conjunctions (keďže, lebo and pretože) in Slovak in terms of coordination vs subordination meanings. The research is based on the Slovak National Corpus and grammatical descriptions, as well as on elicitation from a native speaker of Slovak through a questionnaire designed to identify relevant typological parameters. The parameters under study include the position of the causal clause relative to the consequence clause, as well as its propensity to occur with focus particles and under negation, to introduce answers to why-questions and occur on different semantic levels (content, epistemic and speech act levels in Eve Sweeter’s terms). Particular attention is paid to the latter, less studied, set of parameters. These parameters are often related to co- ordination and subordination properties, with coordinability regarded as a multi-parameter term (cf. a similar approach to transitivity by P. Hopper and S. Thompson or the differentiation of clitics from affixes by A. Zwicky and G. Pullum). Each of the three causal conjunctions under consideration proves to combine coordination and subordination features. Lebo as “the most coordinative” conjunction demonstrates only one subordination feature, an ability to introduce answers to why-questions (probably due to its origin from discourse markers used in coordinate constructions), while keďže proves to possess the highest proportion of subordination features. Moreover, keďže behaves heterogeneously with regard to speech act constructions where it can occur in imperative sentences, but not in interrogative ones. The conjunction pretože behaves as coordinate in semantic terms and as subordinate in terms of focusability. All the three conjunctions tend to function as coordinate in semantic terms while displaying varying behavior in the syntactic domain as regards the degree of focusability and the position of the causal clause.

Further research is required to describe typological properties of less common Slovak conjunctions.