Exotic Conditional Clauses

[vec]

Are there more exotic ways of handling conditional clauses than the if-like subordinate clause?

Are there languages that exclusively use verb marking with no conjunctions involved, similar to English "Were he to go, I would disown him"? In such cases, is the protasis considered a dependent clause? Are there languages where the protasis is not a dependent clause?

I'd love any examples you can think of. I haven't had much luck finding information on non-IE conditionals.

[Frislander]

Greenlandic

[vec]

Cool. How does Greenlandic handle counterfactual conditions?

Also, is seqinner "sunshine" in the example given a verb or a noun? Anyone know?

[Frislander]

First question: don't know, find a grammar.

Second question: It'll be a verb and the thing on the Wikipedia page will be a misgloss.

[dhok]

Algonquian languages have separate inflection paradigms for verbs in independent clauses (the independent order) and those in subordinate clauses (the conjunct order). (This is a bit misleading as there are other orders depending on the language, and not all conjunct verbs are subordinate, but this is close enough). In Menominee, protases are conjunct (thus subordinate), optionally (but not obligatorily) introduced by the particle kīspen, and apodoses are independent. There are so-called 'submode' versions of the conjunct marked either by stem ablaut (so-called 'initial change') and/or by the suffixation of a suffix to the very end of the verb following the personal endings, but if-clauses in Menominee take the simple conjunct. The simple conjunct can mean all sorts of things by itself, and particles like kīspen aren't used unless the need arises- so piat, the 3sg conjunct of pīw 'he comes', may mean 'if he comes', 'that he comes', or 'when he comes', or even an ablative absolute-like 'with him coming' depending on context, with kīspen used only to resolve ambiguities.

Bloomfield's grammar doesn't cover counterfactuals, and I'm not going to go hunting around in Menomini Texts to find one, so let's look at Ojibwe, because it's the only language I can find that has a grammar that does cover them. Ojibwe (Nishnaabemwin, specifically) counterfactuals use a verb in the preterite or preterite dubitative (dubitative being an evidential) conjunct with the introductory particle giishpin, which is pretty clearly cognate to kīspen.

[Astraios]

Turkish uses the conditional suffix -sa, which conjugates like a verb (i.e. with the same personal suffixes as the perfective marker -di, as opposed to the copular suffixes of, say, the durative marker -iyor). Compare verbal yapar-sa-n “if you do” and yap-tı-n “you did” with copular yap-ıyor-sun “you are doing”. Prefacing the conditional verb with the conjunction eğer “if” (borrowed from Persian) is optional.

Fazla içersen sarhoş olursun.
fazla içer-se-n sarhoş olur-sun
too drink-Cond-2Sg.Vbl drunk become-2Sg.Cop
If you drink too much you get drunk.

[vec]

Algonquian languages have separate inflection paradigms for verbs in independent clauses (the independent order) and those in subordinate clauses (the conjunct order). (This is a bit misleading as there are other orders depending on the language, and not all conjunct verbs are subordinate, but this is close enough). In Menominee, protases are conjunct (thus subordinate), optionally (but not obligatorily) introduced by the particle kīspen, and apodoses are independent. There are so-called 'submode' versions of the conjunct marked either by stem ablaut (so-called 'initial change') and/or by the suffixation of a suffix to the very end of the verb following the personal endings, but if-clauses in Menominee take the simple conjunct. The simple conjunct can mean all sorts of things by itself, and particles like kīspen aren't used unless the need arises- so piat, the 3sg conjunct of pīw 'he comes', may mean 'if he comes', 'that he comes', or 'when he comes', or even an ablative absolute-like 'with him coming' depending on context, with kīspen used only to resolve ambiguities.

Bloomfield's grammar doesn't cover counterfactuals, and I'm not going to go hunting around in Menomini Texts to find one, so let's look at Ojibwe, because it's the only language I can find that has a grammar that does cover them. Ojibwe (Nishnaabemwin, specifically) counterfactuals use a verb in the preterite or preterite dubitative (dubitative being an evidential) conjunct with the introductory particle giishpin, which is pretty clearly cognate to kīspen.

This is super helpful, thank you!

Turkish uses the conditional suffix -sa, which conjugates like a verb (i.e. with the same personal suffixes as the perfective marker -di, as opposed to the copular suffixes of, say, the durative marker -iyor). Compare verbal yapar-sa-n “if you do” and yap-tı-n “you did” with copular yap-ıyor-sun “you are doing”. Prefacing the conditional verb with the conjunction eğer “if” (borrowed from Persian) is optional.

Fazla içersen sarhoş olursun.
fazla içer-se-n sarhoş olur-sun
too drink-Cond-2Sg.Vbl drunk become-2Sg.Cop
If you drink too much you get drunk.

Awesome! Can the Turkish conditional be used in independent clauses also?

[Vijay]

Oops, I meant to post here but never did!

Awesome! Can the Turkish conditional be used in independent clauses also?

Yes, in sentences beginning with keşke, which means something like 'if only...!' (this is another loanword from Persian).

In Hindi/Urdu, you put the main verb in the if-clause in the subjunctive and use [t̪o] 'then' in the next clause (usually at the beginning of the next clause, but just to make things fun, word order scrambling is pretty common in this language, too! Also, it seems that you don't use [t̪o] if you mean 'whether' rather than 'if'). As in Turkish, the Persian loanword [əˈgəɾ] 'if' is optional.

In Malayalam, you first put the main verb in the if-clause in past tense. If the verb is affirmative, you may then add either of the suffixes -[aːl] or -[eŋgil] to it, but I think -[aːl] is more common. If it's negative, you must instead use -[eŋgil] unless you somehow manage to rephrase it as an affirmative (e.g. "if I don't go" "if I end up not going").

[Ser]

Are there languages that exclusively use verb marking with no conjunctions involved, similar to English "Were he to go, I would disown him"? In such cases, is the protasis considered a dependent clause? Are there languages where the protasis is not a dependent clause?

English can also do conditions with simple juxtaposition (the protasis always going first): "he calls me that, I don't talk to him for the whole day". Not too terribly common and limited to the habitual present tense AFAICT, but it's possible. This thing of making conditions by juxtaposing independent sentences is very common in Mandarin though, and not limited to a habitual aspect at all (although Mandarin has an equivalent of "if-then" too).

[Nesescosac]

Cool. How does Greenlandic handle counterfactual conditions?

Sorry for the late reply - this class of mine only meets once a week, but I asked a professor of mine who's worked on Greenlandic for a while now, and Greenlandic handles counterfactuals by a set of affixes, different from the ones that are used for regular conditionals.