(1) Zaspiewam tak jak Maria zaspiewala. (Polish) FREE RELATIVE I-will-sing DEM how Maria sang ŒI will sing the way Maria sang.¹ (2) Jak Maria zaspiewala, tak ja zaspiewam. CORRELATIVE how Maria sang, DEM I will-sing (3) Jezeli Maria zaspiewa to ja tez zaspiewam. CONDITIONAL if Maria sings, TO I also will-sing ŒIf Mary sings, I will also sing.¹
First, I show that to found in Polish conditionals is not a correlative proform, analogous to the English then. The two have very different distribution. Iatridou 1991 and 1994 shows that in English then is disallowed in even if and only if conditionals. The same environments, however, allow to in Polish, as shown in (4a-b).
(4)a. Nawet jezeli Jan bedzie pijany, to Bill bedzie na niego glosowal. Even if Jan will-be drunk TO Bill will for him vote ŒEven if Jan is drunk, (*then) Bill will vote for him.¹ b. Tylko jezeli bedzie ladna pogoda to pojedziemy na plaze. Only if will-be nice weather TO we-will-go to beach ŒOnly if the weather is nice, (*then) we will go to the beach.¹
If to is not then, what is it then? I analogize the presence of to in conditionals to the presence of to in nominal predicate structures and pseudoclefts, exemplified in (5).
(5)a. Jan to lekarz/*madry Jan TO doctor/ clever ŒJan is a doctor/clever.¹ b. Kogo Maria lubi to dla mnie tajemnica. Who Maria likes TO for me mystery ŒWho Maria likes is a mystery to me.¹To here functions as a copula with two arguments of the same categorial status; DPs or CPs (in the case of pseudoclefts).
(6) a. NP to NP b. *NP to AP c. CP to CPI further show that (i) to found in conditionals is also an instance of this ³determiner copula² (akin to clitic copulas found in Hebrew (Rapoport 1987) or Haitian and Capervedean Creoles (Babtista 1997)), (ii) free relatives and correlatives, analogously to conditionals, underlyingly involve a copula to, (iii) t-pronouns found in free relatives and correlatives are a result of incorporation. On this analysis a conditional contains a copula to selecting for a small clause complement. The small clause contains two CPs, the if-clause and the matrix clause. The if-clause moves to [Spec, to].
(7)a. [to [SC [CP zaspiewam] [CP jezeli Maria zaspiewa] ] b. [ [CP jezeli Maria zaspiewa]i to [SC [CP zaspiewam] ti] c. Jezeli Maria zaspiewa, to zaspiewam. (=example (3))
In free relatives and correlatives a wh-pronoun incorporates into the copula to, and the resulting spell-out is an appropriate t-pronoun (manner in the case at hand).
(8)a. [to [SC [CP Maria zaspiewala jak] [CP zaspiewam jak] ] b. [to [SC [CP jaki Maria zaspiewala ti ] [CP jaki zaspiewam ti ] ] c. [to+jaki [SC [CP jak Maria zaspiewala ] [CP ti zaspiewam ] ] d. [ [CP zaspiewam ]i tak [SC[CP jak Maria zaspiewala ] ti ] e. Zaspiewam tak jak Maria zaspiewala. (=example (1))
Correlatives, differing from free relatives only in which of the two CPs raises to Spec, on this analysis are treated analogously to inverse copular structures like ŒThe culprit is John¹.
(9)a. [ to [SC [CP Maria zaspiewala jak] [CP zaspiewam jak] ] b. [ to [SC [CP jaki Maria zaspiewala ti ] [CP jaki zaspiewam ti ] ] d. [ to+jaki [SC [CP jak Maria zaspiewala ] [CP ti zaspiewam ] ] c. [ [CP jak Maria zaspiewa3a ]i tak [SC ti [CP zaspiewam] ] e. Jak Maria zaspiewala, tak zaspiewam. (=example (2))
I conclude with the implications of this analysis for the general theory of conditionals. Polish facts offer interesting new support for Geis¹s 1970 intuition that conditionals parallel in structure relative clauses (see also Lycan 1984), as suggested by the following paraphrase:
(10) I will sing in the event in which you sing.
SELECTED REFERENCES
Babtista, M. 1997. The Morpho-syntax of Nominal and Verbal Categories in Caperverdean
Creole. Ph.D. dissertation. Harvard University.
Chomsky, N. 1995. The Minimalist Program. MIT Press. Cambridge: MA.
Geis, M. L. 1970. Adverbial Subordinate Clauses in English. Ph. D. dissertation. MIT.
Heycock, C. and A. Kroch. 1998. ³Pseudocleft Connectedness: Implications for the LF
Interface Level.² To appear in Linguistic Inquiry.
Iatridou, S. 1991. Topics in Conditionals. Ph.D. dissertation. MIT.
Iatridou, S. 1994. ³On the Contribution of Conditional Then² Natural Language Semantics
2:171-199.
Izvorski, R. 1996. ŒThe Syntax and Semantics of Correlative Proforms,¹ Proceedings of
NELS 26. Harvard University and MIT.
Kayne, R. 1994. The Antisymmetry of Syntax. MIT Press. Cambridge: MA.
Lycan, W.G. 1984. A Syntactically Motivated Theory of Conditionals. Midwest Studies
in Philosophy.
Partee, B. 1998. ³Copular Inversion Puzzles.² Paper presented at the UConn Workshop
on Semantics.
Rapoport, T.V. Copular, Nominal and Small Clauses: a Study of Israeli Hebrew. Ph.D.
dissertation. MIT.
About the PLC23 Committee
Previously held Penn Linguistics Colloquium: PLC22 (1998), PLC21 (1997)
Penn Department of Linguistics
University of Pennsylvania