Vortrag von Irina Burukina (Eötvös-Loránd-Universität Budapest)
Mechanisms of clausal adjunction: Rationale infinitives and imperatives in Mari
The talk discusses the general question of how clauses can be used as modifiers (adjuncts) of events, addressing the following two problems: (i) many clauses are fully saturated propositions, while modifiers are predicates, and (ii) clauses refer to "neutral" situations, while modifiers have a specific temporal/causal/etc. flavour. Focusing on data from Mari, I argue that, in addition to the P-strategy, whereby an adjunct clause is introduced by an adposition (see e.g., Landau 2021), the Mood-strategy is available, whereby an adjunct clause is derived by manipulating the clause-internal Mood and modality. Specifically, I will examine the of Mari rationale/purpose infinitives and imperatives, and I will present a comprehensive semantico-syntactic analysis in terms of a teleological modal inserted in MoodP that successfully captures the peculiar properties of these constructions.