POSITION CLASSES OF CONJUNCTIONS IN BARTANGI

In the article, I consider the syntax of coordinating and subordinating clause conjunctions in Bartangi (an Iranian Pamir language of the Shughni-Roshani branch). I show that, unlike most other Iranian languages and in contrast to earlier descriptions, Bartangi lacks clause-initial subordinators, while clause-internal (second-position and preverbal) conjunctions are predominant. At the same time, some of the conjunctions traditionally viewed as coordinating or clause-initial are better analyzed as final conjunctions or particles. The core of the system of conjunctions in Bartangi consists of the following: polyfunctional clause-internal ca and diIN; “clause-initial” diEX; coordinating xu ‘and’ and at ‘and, but’. The subordinator ca must be strictly preverbal, i.e. immediately left-adjacent to the verb, separated only by negation. The subordinator diIN is variably placed in the preverbal or second positions; however, its second position is not the same as the second position of person-number clitics, and its preverbal position is different from the preverbal position of ca. The marker diEX, I claim, is not a subordinator at all; it is a final particle indicating the presence of a continuation clause in the following discourse. Finally, among the two “coordinating” conjunctions this term may properly be applied only to at ‘and, but’, which is situated between two clauses and may begin a new utterance. The conjunction xu ‘and’ must be viewed as a clause-final subordinator. These data are of interest for both further syntactic description of Bartangi and the typology of conjunctions in Iranian languages.