Clause subordination
If there is one question that has excited students of language genesis and language evolution perhaps more than any others then it is the one, namely: How did the properties believed to be restricted to modern human languages arise, in particular syntax and the recursive use of language structures? We will deal with this question in more detail, devoting to syntax (more precisely, morphosyntax) and the next to recursion. In a recent publication, Bickerton observes:
Moreover, the question—as one has to keep reminding non-linguists—is not just how did syntax come to be, but why it took the form that it did, rather than some other form .... clearly we have neither understood syntax nor produced an adequate theory of language evolution until this last question has been answered (Bickerton 2005: 9)
We are concerned with this last question, focusing on a core area of syntax, namely complex sentences—more narrowly on how clause subordination came to be. As elsewhere, we will use grammaticalization theory to reconstruct some salient patterns of evolution; and as elsewhere we argue that synchronic language structure can be viewed as the frozen product of cognitive and communicative processes that happened in the past. Accordingly, we argue that underlying the evolution of clause combining there is a strategy whereby existing grammatical means are recruited for novel discourse functions, and that there are two distinct mechanisms whereby the forms used for these discourse functions are transformed into new syntactic structures. The subject matter is far from new; after Givo̒n’s (1979c) pioneering work it has received some attention in recent years (especially Harris and Campbell 1995; Bybee and Noonan 2001; Hopper and Traugott 2003: 175–211; Givo̒n 2006; see also Diessel 2005), and our discussion will build on these foundations.
Clause subordination is a complex subject matter and the typological diversity of structures it exhibits in the languages of the world is enormous. It therefore goes without saying that we will not be able to do justice to this vast Weld; rather, we will be restricted to a few salient manifestations of it that appear to be crosslinguistically common, ignoring the many other manifestations that have come to be known.
