https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1334-0501
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ABSTRACT
This paper discusses the consequences of the reintroduction of the potential mood marker bi-construction into the system of conditional marking in standard Macedonian. This marker had been almost lost from the Balkanized conditional patterns in Macedonian dialects which were based on the opposition hypothetical vs. counterfactual. The counterfactual was realized by the isomorphic Balkan conditional type: subjunctive mood in the protasis and a construction based on the future marker ḱe + imperfect verb in the apodosis. Under the influence of the neighboring Slavic languages the bi-construction reentered the conditional system penetrating into existing patterns and creating new ones. The spread of the bi-patterns is confirmed by the results of the quantitative analysis of the examples from literary works belonging to different periods. It is highly possible that this “comeback” was enabled by the imported conditional patterns with koga ‘when’ and dokolku ‘in case/if’ realized in potential mood. The main hypothesis is that the borrowed conditional patterns enriched the system of conditional marking in Macedonian causing its partial realignment. Although semantically overlapping with the Balkan conditional pattern, these two patterns typically code present and future unrealizable situations, often endowed with special discourse functions.
Notes
1 Present and past conditionals are differentiated modally (Chrakovskij Citation2009a, 277).
2 The future marker ḱe developed from the Proto-Slavic verb xotętъ ‘want’.
3 This analytic construction has two values: past conditional (Topolinjska Citation2008, 67) and temporal when it marks habitual past events in Modern Greek and Balkan Slavic (Asenova Citation2002, 234). In Bulgarian, the most common meaning is the future-in-the-past, but it is past conditional in Macedonian (Belyavski-Frank Citation2003, 5). This construction served as a base for the creation of parallel non-witnessed past conditional forms with ḱe+l-participle (Koneski Citation1982, 202).
4 Assumingly, contact was not restricted only to the Serbian variant but to the Serbo-Croat, the dominant language in Yugoslavia. Moreover, the anonymous reviewer pointed out that dokolkoto was used in 19th century Bulgarian texts, which may have influenced the spread of dokolku.
5 Kramer (Citation1989, 144) notes that dokolku was not included in the first Dictionary of Macedonian language and that educated native speakers did not accept it.
6 The interpretation of examples (1–9) was obtained from a questionnaire conducted with 40 students at the University Ss Cyril and Methodius in Skopje.
7 Asenova (Citation2002, 234) claims that in all Balkan languages the imperfect tense has a modal underpinning as it marks habituality.
8 The term ‘real’ is questionable because “a conditional never involves factuality, it never expresses the factuality of either of its constituent” (Comrie Citation1986, 88).
9 In the typology of conditionals in Thompson et al. (Citation2007, 255) unreal conditionals are divided into predictive and imaginative; the latter include hypothetical and counterfactual conditionals based on imagining what did/could not happen.
10 This is a common pattern for conditional with optative semantics of the type Da sum na tvoe mesto, jas bi … ‘If I were you I would … ’
11 For more on pragmatic functions of conditionals see Sweetser (Citation1990).
12 Thompson et al. (Citation2007, 258) think that predictive conditionals cannot be claimed to be real or unreal because they “make predictions about a state of affairs in the real world as opposed in an imaginative but the prediction is yet to happen”.
13 The short representation of each pattern is given in this order: conditional marker+mood in the protasis followed by (indicated by dots …) tense/mood marking in the apodosis. The abbreviations stand for: fut –future tense, prs – present, impf – imperfect, bi – bi-construction. The arrows symbolize functional extensions to other domains (those with full lines being more frequent).
14 The abbreviations stand for the following authors: MC – Marko Cepenkov, Siljan Štrkot, VI – Vasil Iljoski, Begalka, RK – Risto Krle, Milioni mačenici, SP – Stale Popov, Kaleš Anǵa.
15 The abbreviations stand for the following works: GA – Ǵ. Abadziev “Pustina,” PA – P. Andreevski “Pirej,” Ant – Antologija na makedonskiot postmodernistički raskaz, DS – D. Solev, Kratkata prolet na Mono Samonikov, KK – K. Kolbe, Snegot vo Kazablanka, AP – A. Prokopiev, Izbrani raskazi, KM – K. Maleska Mojot neprijatel Itar Pejo, RB – R. Bužarovska, Mojot maž, Ne odam nikade.
16 http://forum.crnobelo.com, www. femina.mk, http://forum.kajgana.com
17 However, these results should be taken with reservation because they do not reflect the overall distribution of conditional patterns used in forum chats, but only the most frequent ones in the sample.
18 See also example (13) above.
19 Dokolku is a blend of the preposition do ‘to’ and the quantificational adverb kolku ‘how much/many’, thus dokolku is reminiscent of the English inasmuch.
20 I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.