Conjugating conjunctions?

[alice]

Some languages, such as Finnish, negate a verb with a special verb and a form of the verb to be negated, i.e. "I do not give" is expressed, more or less, with "not-I give". It's easy to imagine this being extended to interrogatives; is it ever extended to conjunctions, so that "If I give" becomes "if-I give", with a finite form of a verb expressing "if I"?

[merijn]

Some dialects of Dutch inflect that, a fictional example in English how it works is that you say "I think that-s he sing-s" Here is an article I found when googling "inflected complementizers"I only have read the introduction but in the introduction mentions a lot of other papers tackling the same subject.
I also believe Arabic does something similar, but I am not completely sure, and in the back of my mind something is nagging that Celtic languages do this too, but I know nothing about Celtic languages so I am probably wrong.

[Cathbad]

I also believe Arabic does something similar

Well, some conjunctions (such as inna) just often add the subject of a following verb as a clitic in the form of an 'object pronoun', but I'm not sure whether that properly counts as 'inflecting the conjunction' (is adding the object pronoun to a preposition 'inflecting the preposition'?). They've got the same form as object pronouns cliticized onto verbs (fa-inna-hu 'and indeed he...' vs. shuft-(h)u I saw him, etc.), and you could simply argue that they're the object/non-nominative form of pronouns, rather than any sort of 'inflection' at all (since these conjunctions also require any non-pronominal argument following them to be in the accusative).

[Ser]

Basically, if Arabic does, then you could analyze English as having that too. There's not much of a difference between e.g. Standard Arabic katab-tu-hu "I wrote it" and ʕalay-hu "on it", except that the convention in Arabic is to write them together.

[merijn]

I also believe Arabic does something similar

Well, some conjunctions (such as inna) just often add the subject of a following verb as a clitic in the form of an 'object pronoun', but I'm not sure whether that properly counts as 'inflecting the conjunction' (is adding the object pronoun to a preposition 'inflecting the preposition'?). They've got the same form as object pronouns cliticized onto verbs (fa-inna-hu 'and indeed he...' vs. shuft-(h)u I saw him, etc.), and you could simply argue that they're the object/non-nominative form of pronouns, rather than any sort of 'inflection' at all (since these conjunctions also require any non-pronominal argument following them to be in the accusative).

The line between cliticization and inflection is not always clear, but based on your description I wouldn't describe Arabic as having conjugated conjunctions. It is apparently different than how I remembered it

[Ser]

A small comment:

is it ever extended to conjunctions, so that "If I give" becomes "if-I give", with a finite form of a verb expressing "if I"?

In such a case, I guess we wouldn't necessarily talk of a conjunction that conjugates too, but rather, a language that uses a conjugating verb for something that English uses an uninflected conjunction for.

[Xephyr]

Not exactly the same thing you're talking about, but Hopi inflects its "and" conjunction for case.

moosa nöq pooko
cat and:SUBJ dog
"[a cat and a dog]SUBJ"

moosat nit pookot
cat-OBJ and:OBJ dog-OBJ
"[a cat and a dog]OBJ"

[alice]

A small comment:

is it ever extended to conjunctions, so that "If I give" becomes "if-I give", with a finite form of a verb expressing "if I"?

In such a case, I guess we wouldn't necessarily talk of a conjunction that conjugates too, but rather, a language that uses a conjugating verb for something that English uses an uninflected conjunction for.

That's what I should have said to begin with.

[Niedokonany]

Polish has them too:

Chcę żeby-ś tam poszedł. "I want you to go there."
want:1sg PURP-2sg there went
*Chcę żeby tam poszedł-eś.
want:1sg PURP there went-2sg

żebym, żebyś, żeby, żebyśmy, żebyście 1sg, 2sg, 3, 1pl, 2pl

cf.

Wiem, że tam poszedł-eś. "I know you went there."
know:1sg that there went-2sg
Wiem, że-ś tam poszedł.
know:1sg that-2sg there went

While in case of the complementizer że the 2sg ending -(e)ś can be attached either to the verb or to the complementizer, in case of the purposive subordinator żeby it can only attach to the subordinator. Diachronically the person ending developed from an inflected auxiliary, and then the subordinative conjunctions split into those which need to combine with it, those which can and those which never do.

[awer]

Polish has them too:

Chcę żeby-ś tam poszedł. "I want you to go there."
want:1sg PURP-2sg there went
*Chcę żeby tam poszedł-eś.
want:1sg PURP there went-2sg

Personally I'd analyse it as:
Chcę że-byś tam poszedł.
*Chcę że tam poszedł-byś. (I want that you would go there.)
"Żeby" is now one word but it derives from "że" and "by" so to me it can be divided, whereas "by" and its inflectional ending cannot.
Me being Polish, it's funny to realise that such a vague expression of mere wish containing a conditional particle "by", like "I want that you would go there", changes, by constant use and ensuing convention, into an imperative-like "I want you to go there", with the conditionality of "by" basically imperceptible.

[Hallow XIII]

Celtic languages do this too, but I know nothing about Celtic languages so I am probably wrong.

They don't quite do this, but they inflect prepositions.

For example, the Irish preposition ó ("from") inflects as follows: uaim - from me, uat - from you, uaidh - from him, uaithi - from her, uainn - from us, uaibh - from you (pl.), uathu - from them.

In Irish, some prepositions also inflect for tense in certain positions, for instance: Foilsiú sonraí faoi ceantair inarbh fhéidir pátrúnacht Chaitliceach bunscoileanna a dhífheistiú: "Publication of data about areas in which it would be possible to divest Catholic patronage of primary schools", where inarbh is an inflected form of i that glosses as in.REL.be.COND.

[gach]

Something more to add, Walman has two conjunction like verbs with the meaning "and" that are used for combining two NPs. The two verbs inflect for subject and object so that the NP preceding the verb acts as the subject and the following one as the object of the verb. Schematic general gloss for the structure using indices for the NPs would be

X.i SUB.i-and-OBJ.j Y.j
"X and Y"

For real information go check the paper at http://linguistics.buffalo.edu/people/f ... manAnd.pdf

[Burke]

Laura, does Japanese do what you are thinking?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... _Verbs.pdf

I thought the +te form of verbs +mo after it might be pretty much what you're talking about. Te form is conjunctive itself as well.

Also, the +ba form is conditional and very similar to what you're talking about I think.

[clawgrip]

Pretty old thread to be suddenly revived here, but anyway:

Mo and ba are both particles and cannot be inflected, so I don't think it is an example of what is being discussed. In fact, it's kind of the opposite of what she mentioned. Instead of "If-I give," it's "I give-if."