Rozwój funkcjonalny spójnika ali w językach słowiańskich
Functional development of the conjunction ali in Slavic languages

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to form a hypothesis regarding the functional development of the conjunction ali in Slavic languages. The conjunction is derived from the Proto-Slavic compound *a li, which introduced a rhetorical question in Old Church Slavonic. It has appeared in several languages and has served a variety of functions, such as adversative, disjunctive, mirative, introducing conditionals. The hypothesis assumes the existence of two branches of its functional development, one of which is initiated by the use in rhetorical questions, which could have been later interpreted as adversative sentences. The paper analyses word uses in the oldest texts of selected Slavic languages: Serbo-Croatian, Old Polish and East Slavic languages. The methodology is based on the achievements of modern theoretical and typological linguistics, the functional-typological approach to coordination relations and the theory of semantic maps.

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