Precautioning purpose constructions in typological perspective: a functional trade-off between clause-linking devices and tense–aspect–mood (TAM) marking

Abstract The present study explores precautioning purpose constructions in a sample of 71 languages. Languages may use non-specialized clause-linking devices to express precautioning purpose relations, e.g. positive purpose clauses with simply a negative marker being added to the basic proposition (e.g. I said it so that the child would not touch it ). Moreover, languages may display a specialized clause-linking device (e.g. she helped the child lest he be sick ). Here it is shown that when precautioning purpose clauses are encoded with a specialized clause-linking device, they will tend to appear with no TAM or with actualized tense–aspect–mood (TAM) markers (e.g. past tense). This stems from the fact that there is no need to have other morphosyntactic material aiding in the meaning of the construction. The specialized clause-linking device is the main feature that helps to evoke the precautioning purpose semantics of the construction. On the other hand, when precautioning purpose clauses are formed with a non-specialized clause-linking device, they will tend to occur with non-actualized TAM markers (e.g. irrealis). In this scenario, a non-actualized TAM marker and a non-specialized clause-linking device work in concert in the expression of the adverbial relation holding between clauses.