Between Conjunction and Discourse Marker: The Emergent Grammar of Hebrew Adverbial Clauses in a Multimodal Cross-Linguistic Perspective

PI Prof. Yael Maschler, ISF Grant #572/24

Over the last three decades, interactionally-oriented approaches to language such as “Emergent Grammar” (Hopper 1987), “on-line syntax” (Auer 2009), and “dialogical grammar” (Linell 2009, Du Bois 2014) have brought about a radical change in our conceptualization of language from a hierarchical, autonomously-structured mental construct (Saussure 1959[1913]) to a usage-based, temporally-unfolding, tightly-interwoven with embodied conduct, ever-evolving resource for carrying out social actions in the dialogical process of interaction. Recent years have seen an increase in research on the grammar-body interface, yet studies relating to complex syntax in this domain are relatively scarce. Moreover, despite increasing calls for cross-linguistic studies in Interactional Linguistics (IL) (Couper-Kuhlen & Selting 2018), the field is still only in its infancy. Employing the methodologies of IL and multimodal interaction analysis, the proposed project ties into these two lacunae with the focus on Hebrew adverbial clauses in a multimodal cross-linguistic perspective. I zoom in on actions that develop a routinized grammar characterizable as complex syntax of the causal, conditional, and concessive adverbial varieties, aspiring to show that they cannot be explained by looking at language alone, since they emerge within particular courses of embodied conduct and interface with it in complex ways, involving augmentation of meaning potentials based on the speaker’s embodied conduct, and contingency with respect to the recipient’s embodied conduct.  

The study has both a Hebrew component and a cross-linguistic one, and it expands a currently ongoing project (ISF grant 941/20, 2020-2024) within a larger collaboration examining patterns of clause-combining of the complement, relative, and pseudo-cleft varieties across four languages from different (sub)families: Estonian (Finno-Ugric), French (Romance), Hebrew (Semitic), and Swedish (Germanic). Together with Prof. Leelo Keevallik (University of Linköping, Sweden), Prof. Jan Lindström (University of Helsinki, Finland, with two granted parallel projects, from the Academy of Finland, 2018-2022, and from the Swedish Literary Society of Finland for 2024-2027), and Prof. Simona Pekarek Doehler (University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, with two granted parallel projects from the Swiss National Science Foundation, 2018-2022 and 2023-2027), we propose to expand our study of complex syntax in interaction to clauses of the adverbial variety, thus approaching a more comprehensive overview of the emergent grammar of complex syntax. The goal of the proposed project, then, is to investigate the grammar-body interface, focusing on “multimodal packages for the production of action” (Hayashi 2005: 47) involved in employment of Hebrew (1) causal, (2) conditional, and (3) concessive structures, or parts thereof, in comparison to parallel structures and actions in Estonian, French, and Swedish. In so doing, the proposed study aims to also shed light on the sometimes vague distinction between conjunction and discourse marker. 

The study has significance within at least the following realms: Clause-combining in a multisemiotic ecology, the grammaticization of DMs from adverbial conjunctions, emergent grammar in a multisemiotic ecology, universal aspects of grammar use for interaction, and human sociality.