Asyndetic Coordination

Clause combining is basically concerned with the clausal relationship traditionally studied in terms of coordination and subordination. Lehmann defines it as a "relation of dependency or sociation between the clauses” (182). For Foley and van Valin, clause linkage is the unification of the "internal morphosyntax of the clause with the complex structures of the sentence, and ultimately, of discourse" (238). They study clause linkage in terms of the binary positions of the characteristics like [+ -] dependency and [+ -] embeddedness. According to them, complex sentences have three types of nexus as illustrated in the figure 1.

Figure 1 Inter-clausal relationship

- embedded - dependent = Coordination

+ embedded + dependent = Subordination

In syndetic coordination, two or more coordinands are linked with one or more overt coordinators, whereas in asyndetic coordination the coordinands are simply juxtaposed without any overt linking device. Although both the types of coordination are attested in Chitoniya Tharu, the evidences in our corpus assure that Chitoniya Tharu prefers the asyndetic coordination. Only a few evidences of syndetic coordination are attested in the whole corpus. However, we can find the evidences of both monodyndetic and bisyndetic coordination in this language. Bisyndetic coordination is attested in the emphatic and emphatic negative coordination where correlative coordinators are used. Emphatic coordination is discussed under conjunctive coordination below.

On the semantic level, Chitoniya Tharu exhibits all the four types of coordinate constructions that Haspelmath (Coordination 2) discusses: conjunctive coordination, disjunctive coordination, adversative coordination and causal coordination. We proceed to discuss all these types of coordination in Chitoniya Tharu following Haspelmath (2004, 2007) in the paragraphs to come.

2.2 Conjunctive

It can be attested at both the levels- phrasal and clausal. Haspelmath points out that there are languages that have different conjunction strategies for NPs, VPs, and clauses (Coordinating Constructions 11). But Chitoniya Tharu does not make any distinction between the NP and event coordination. The conjunctive coordinators in Chitoniya Tharu are ʌ and hʌ̃se at both the levels, though hʌ̃se is preferred in clause level coordination. The examples (1a-c) and (2a-b) above can be taken as the examples of syndetic conjunctive coordination as they use the conjunctive particles ʌ and hʌ̃se. The examples in (3a-b) exemplify the asyndetic conjunctive coordination.

(3) a. beskʰa woskʰa deli pani wani deli kʰae pie pucʰʌli beskʰa woskʰa de -l -i pani wani de -l -i cushion REDUP give -PST -3SG water REDUP give -PST -3SG kʰa -e pi -e pucʰ -l -i eat -INF drink -INF ask -PST -3SG

‘She offered him a cushion, water and food.’ (JF.BM-78.0561)

b. u bʌiṭʰdeli cʌḍʰʌli tino jʌna jʌnyãwã