Causal markers derived from discourse particles in Slavic and Baltic languages

Abstract The paper analyzes causal markers derived from discourse particles in Old Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, and Lithuanian. This path of secondary grammaticalization seems to be rare in the languages of the world and can be summarized as follows. First, discourse particles can eventually migrate within the clause towards the left edge of the clause typical for clausal markers, acquiring the properties of coordinate markers. Then, the markers under consideration can acquire some properties of subordinate markers. The properties analyzed in this paper include: the position of the causal clause, and the markers’ ability to occur in speech act contexts, to combine with contrastive particles or contrastive negation, to introduce answers to why -questions, and to be coordinated. It turns out that causal markers derived from discourse particles tend to behave as coordinate markers in speech act contexts, while in answers to why -questions they instead demonstrate subordinate properties. The degree of acquisition of subordinate properties varies for the markers analyzed in the paper. In this respect, Ukrainian bo and Polish bo seem to have acquired most of the properties of subordinate markers.