Transient subordinate clauses in Balkan Turkic in its shift to Standard Average European subordination. Dialectal and historical evidence

1 Introduction

Turkic varieties spoken in the language contact setting of the Balkan sprachbund make use of two main subordination strategies:^[1] the Turkic and the Indo-European (IE). It is generally observed that while the native Turkic subordinate clauses (SC) are in marked decline, IE-type SCs represent the preponderant model among these varieties on average (e.g. Friedman 2006; Matras 2003; Matras and Tufan 2007; Menz 2001, 2006). Within the class of IE-type SCs itself, the dominant type tends to be those modeled after Standard Average European (SAE) SCs,^[2] while Persian-type SCs usually constitute a sizeable minority. In addition to SCs that conform to the Turkic and IE models, those that mix the properties of the two in several different ways are also attested in the region with marginal frequencies and present a problem regarding the shift in the subordination system of Balkan Turkic. Let us now briefly study the two main models of subordination referred to, before we turn to the problematic hybrid clauses.

2 The structure of the paper

Up to this point, I have provided a description of the RT subordination system, which will serve as a background for the main theme of the paper. But before I move on to the main theme, let me provide some information on the content of the rest of the paper.

First and foremost, in Section 3, I outline the research problem that the present study identifies and addresses. As pointed out immediately above, this problem is constituted by a group of hybrid SCs (‘X-clauses’). In that section, I also provide a summary of the answer to this problem that I develop in the rest of the paper (‘the transient behavior hypothesis’).

Next, in Section 4, I list the textual sources and statistical tools that I use and explain my research method.

In the subsequent two sections, I first flesh out my description of X-clauses. In Section 5, I provide a detailed description of X-clauses in modern PRT varieties using the feature decomposition approach introduced above. In Section 6, I present examples of structures that are akin to X-clauses in various languages. This shows that X-clauses are not just an oddity of PRT.

In the five sections following that, I present the case for the transient behavior hypothesis and the broader diachronic approach to the X-clauses problem that the hypothesis implements. First, in Section 7, I lay out this hypothesis, which, in a nutshell, proposes that X-clauses are ‘oscillations’ of sorts in the syntactic system. Next, in Section 8, I provide various suggestions as to how the notion of oscillation could be understood in the present context and discuss one implication of that construal. That discussion is one argument for the transient behavior hypothesis. Next, in Section 9, I transition from a contemporary synchronic dialectological perspective to a diachronic one and provide historical data on X-clauses. Thus, I try to establish that X-clauses are not a recent product of modern PRT dialects but have been in use for several centuries. That discussion leads up to an argument for my diachronic approach to X-clauses: in Section 10, I compare 17th and 21st-century WRT from the perspective of subordination and propose a scenario in which X-clauses fit into an account of syntactic shift in that dialect group. I present another argument in favor of the diachronic approach in Section 11 where I propose that a frequency drift has been underway from Early to Modern PRT from X-clauses that are structurally closer to Turkic SCs towards those that are more like IE-type SCs.

In Section 12, I turn away from the approach adopted in the preceding sections that focus on the formal aspects of X-clauses and take up a number of psycho- and sociolinguistic issues pertaining to the shift to SAE-type subordination in PRT and the attendant emergence of X-clauses. First, I propose a broader contact theoretic account as a context within which the shift to SAE-type subordination and X-clauses in PRT can be considered. Then, I discuss various sociolinguistic factors that could potentially influence the use of X-clauses in PRT. Section 13 concludes the paper.

3 The research problem and the summary answer

So to repeat, in addition to Turkic and IE-type clauses, a group of problematic SCs are in use in PRT. These are attested exclusively in the two PRT groups, with differing frequency distributions. I will dub these structures ‘X-clauses’, a term that I chose to convey a sense of their indeterminate, ambivalent nature: these clauses are seemingly idiosyncratic mixtures of the features of the Turkic and the IE models in Table 1, sometimes also containing novel features that do not come from either model. Thus, they fit neither model and present a problematic pattern. Indeed, they do not even constitute a well-defined class of SC at first glance and look more like a patchwork of clause types each with a low frequency of occurrence. Below are some illustrative examples from the six types occurring at above-average frequency within this group, which account for 81.3% of their occurrences.

The SC in example (4) is almost like an IE-type SC in that it is finite and introduced by a clause-initial connector, but it is prepositive like a Turkic SC. The SC in (5) is postpositive and introduced by an initial subordinator, again like an IE-type SC, but is nonfinite (i.e. an action nominal) like a Turkic SC. The SCs in (6), (7), and (8) are postpositive and finite, conforming to the IE model, but are atypical in the subordinators that introduce them. The first has two initial subordinators (viz. ani ki);^[8] the second has two subordinators, one clause-initial and the other clause-final (viz. ani … deye); and the last has a clause-internal subordinator (viz. ne). Finally, the SC in example (9) is prepositive and nonfinite like a Turkic SC but is introduced by a clause-initial subordinator like an IE-type SC.

So, in terms of the feature scheme in Table 1, the problematic nature of X-clauses stems from the fact that they allow both the Turkic (the ‘−’ pole) and the IE (the ‘+’ pole) feature values in virtually any combination that violates the complementary relation between the two models. For instance, as we have seen in examples (4–9), a given X-clause may be prepositive like a Turkic SC but at the same time contain a clause-initial connector like an IE clause, i.e. [−postpositive, +initial].

We can, then, summarize and restate this problem of RT syntax as in (10):

As stated above, my main purpose in this paper is to put forth and lay out the X-clauses problem to the extent that currently available data allow. My investigation is guided by the following questions, among others, which will be taken up in later sections. What patterns do X-clauses present in PRT? Where do X-clauses fit as a group in the syntactic shift at the expense of Turkic and in favor of SAE-type subordination in PRT? Beyond modern PRT varieties, what is the typological and historical status of X-clauses?

Even though X-clauses may appear to be an ill-defined group of SCs at first glance, I will be treating them together as a cluster, perhaps even a third class of SC in addition to Turkic and IE-type clauses. I have two motivations for doing so. First, as we will see in Section 9, in Ferraguto (1611), which is a Turkish text written in what is probably Early WRT (Keskin 2023a, 2023b; Stein 2016), clauses that fit neither the Turkic nor the IE-model (i.e. my X-clauses) are exclusively introduced by the now-obsolete subordinator sciú (i.e. şu) ‘that’. This suggests that these clauses do form a class even though they might appear quite different from one another on the surface. Second, as I will show in due course, subjecting them to a unified treatment affords us interesting insights into the emergence of SAE-type SCs in PRT and the diachronic shift in their favor at the expense of Turkic and Persian-type SCs.

Now, the preceding remarks in this section may have given the reader the impression that the X-clauses problem is essentially a classification problem: if X-clauses are neither Turkic nor IE-type clauses, what type of clause are they? This is not my intent. To begin with, there are 13 different subtypes of X-clause – as we will see in Section 5, which would mean there are 13 different classification problems, not a single ‘X-clauses problem’. Far more importantly, treating X-clauses as individual structures without investigating the patterns that the class as a whole conceals would be missing the forest for the trees. As we will see in due time, X-clauses present a complex pattern, whose real extent and nature we are only beginning to reveal and understand – a pattern that lies hidden in what was hitherto likely thought to be mere noise in the data.

Other researchers may, of course, feel justified to approach each type of X-clause individually from their respective theoretical frameworks. However, irrespective of one’s preference in this regard, it is important that we establish the existence of these aberrant SCs in PRT, as they have not yet been recognized for what they are and studied with any systematicity. They are only briefly and partially mentioned in a few works, notably Friedman (2006: 39), Kılıç (2018: 34–35, 68–69), Matras (2003: 73–79; see Section 12.1 for a discussion of that study), Menz (1999: 105–107), and Stein (2016: 165–167) without noting their extraordinary character and aiming to reveal the patterns that underlie them. The identification and detailing of the X-clauses problem is, then, the first contribution of this paper to scholarly literature.

In addition to identifying the X-clauses problem, I also aim to offer a solution to it which explores a diachronic outlook on the diversity of SCs in PRT: once again, less briefly, I hypothesize that X-clauses are manifestations of the shift from Turkic to SAE-type subordination in PRT syntax. This shift causes oscillations in the values of the features of the PRT subordination system, and the various combinations of feature values yield the various subtypes of X-clause seen in (4–9). This is the transient behavior hypothesis, and the presentation of this potential solution is the second scholarly contribution of the paper.^[9]

The X-clauses problem and the transient behavior hypothesis are not just relevant for PRT. As work in progress suggests, they provide insights into patterns emerging in heritage Turkish in contact with German and English (Keskin et al. in preparation a) and may provide at least a partial model for understanding the finer aspects of contact-induced syntactic change in Turkish in general. That is where there is a theoretical lacuna as explained in Section 12.1. Also, there are reasons to think that this model can be applied, mutatis mutandis, to other contact situations: pieces of this problematic phenomenon in clause combining were observed independently by other researchers in unrelated contact situations, such as in Laz with Turkish contact (Demirok and Öztürk 2022) and in Indo-Aryan languages with Dravidian contact (Bayer 2001).

4 Textual sources, method, and statistics

The data used in this investigation come from the following modern and historical texts.

1. Dialect texts^[10]

   1. Kosovar Turkish: collected and published by Sulçevsi (2019: 192–261) representing the modern West Rumelian varieties.

   2. North Rumelian

      1. Dobruja Turkish: collected and published by Gülvodina (2018: 136–204), Güneş (2009: 123–195), Haliloğlu (2017: 163–231), Karaşinik (2011: 167–250), and Murtaza (2016: 60–319).

      2. Gagauz: selected from numerous sources and published by Özkan (2007: 100–178).

2. Historical texts

   1. Pietro Ferraguto’s Grammatica turchesca dated 1611 published by Bombaci (1940: 222–236)

   2. Jacob Papas’ letter from around 1484–1486 published by Brendemoen (1980: 228)

   3. Yusof’s letter also from around 1484–1486 and published by Brendemoen (1980: 230–231)

The frequency counts of SCs in KT cited in the text are based on the Balkan Turkic Corpus (Keskin et al. in preparation b). The KT texts in this corpus were culled from Sulçevsi (2019: 192–261). The survey of X-clauses in KT was based on all the texts in Sulçevsi (2019) and was done by means of the software #LancsBox (Brezina et al. 2018). For this survey, SCs introduced by ne were identified, as this is the most common SAE-type subordinator there (Stein 2016: 165–166) and were analyzed for the features in Table 1. The findings were then schematized as in Table 3. The same approach was used for the survey of X-clauses in NRT, with the difference that in this case the focus was on clauses introduced by ani, the most common SAE-type subordinator in that group (cf. Menz 1999: 67).^[11] Ferraguto’s work was also analyzed using #LancsBox.

Two separate tools were used for the statistical tests carried out on the frequency counts: (i) Lancaster Stats Tools online that runs R code (Brezina 2018), and (ii) Real Statistics Resource Pack for Microsoft Excel (Zaiontz 2020). Percentages were calculated using MS Excel.

5 Patterns of X-clause in Peripheral Rumelian

As pointed out in Section 4, for my survey of X-clauses in PRT, I first identified the SCs that are introduced by the subordinators ne (in KT representing WRT) and ani (in NRT). As shown in Table 2, this sample totaled 326 SCs, out of which 91 fit neither the Turkic nor the IE models, i.e. were X-clauses.

X-clauses have widely differing frequencies in these two groups of PRT dialects, ultimately due to the differences in the frequencies of SAE-type clauses in each. These figures can be found in the relative frequency columns in Table 2. Despite these differences in frequency, the ratios of X-clauses among ne/ani-clauses in the two dialect groups are not too different from the average of 27.9% (see under ‘Ratios’). However, there may be large differences (not shown in Table 2) between the varieties that make up the two dialect groups. For instance, in NRT, while X-clauses constitute a mere 4.5% of ani-clauses in Gagauz, they are as high as 58.8% on average in Dobruja Turkish.^{[12] , [13]}

For the feature analysis done on the identified ne/ani-clauses based on the SC features in Table 1, I first jettisoned 27 headless relatives, as the question of where the relative clause is positioned with respect to the head noun (i.e. the clause position feature) is not applicable to headless relatives and creates ambiguities when sorting them into one of the X-clause subtypes we will presently see. The remaining 64 SCs could be grouped into 13 subtypes based on their properties, presenting a complex pattern of which we examine the main features below. During this exposition, I will be referring to Table 3 which shows the 13 subtypes and their properties in schematic form.^[14]

6 X-clauses from a typological perspective

Given the significant percentage distribution of X-clauses in PRT, questions arise as to whether they are attested in other languages, where they fit typologically, etc. One cross-linguistic survey that helps place X-clauses in a typological context to some extent is Dryer’s (2013) study on (adverbial) clause types as part of WALS (Dryer and Haspelmath 2013), which covers a range of SC types comparable in structure to those examined here. First, Dryer’s data show that at least some of the atypical features and feature combinations observed in X-clauses are attested in languages outside the Turkic family and the Balkan sprachbund (and presumably not necessarily in a contact setting). This suggests that they are a more common feature of language in general and not an isolated oddity of PRT (see also the works cited at the end of Section 3). Second, according to Dryer’s data, X-clause-like structures are not seen in other members of the Turkic family than PRT or in other languages of the Balkan sprachbund. This is suggestive for my diachronic approach (Sections 7–11): X-clauses are neither a native Turkic feature nor a syntactic borrowing from the majority languages of the Balkans but emerge from the dynamics of syntactic change, probably through language contact.

According to Dryer (2013), the pattern that I refer to here as the IE model is typologically the most frequent one out of a total of five possibilities. It is used as the dominant model in 60.4% of the languages in the WALS sample (398 out of 659), meaning that the other four patterns are fairly marginal cross-linguistically. In 14% of the languages of the sample (93 out of 659), several patterns co-occur. In some languages among these, such as Miya (Chadic, Nigeria), one of the co-occurring patterns will be dominant, as is the case in KT, for instance, where the IE-type clauses make up 66.7% of all SCs (see Section 1.2).

In languages with more than one adverbial clause type, a combination of types is sometimes used in the same clause, which is a characteristic feature of X-clauses. For instance, in example (11) from Bwe Karen (Tibeto-Burman, Myanmar), a clause-initial/internal (Dryer’s first/third type) and a clause-final subordinator (Dryer’s second type) are used in combination.

This pattern can be compared to the combination of clause-initial and clause-final connectors in subtypes X1, X4, and X11 (see example [7]), and the combination of clause-internal and clause-initial connectors in subtype X12.

Another combination, seen in Majang (Surmic, Ethiopia), involves a free subordinative element at the beginning of the clause, a suffix on the verb, and a clitic at the end of the clause, as in example (12):

This is similar to subtypes X3 and X6 (see example [5]) with clause-initial connectors and nonfinite predicates which bear a subordinative suffix.

Another clause type included in the WALS sample comparable to X-clauses is one where the adverbial subordinator appears inside the clause, exactly as in subtypes X7 and X10. These clauses are seen as the dominant pattern in just 1% (eight out of 659) of the languages in the sample. In (13) is an illustrative example from Nkore-Kiga (Bantu, Uganda):

Here, the subordinator obu ‘when’ is positioned between the subject and the finite verb of the adverbial clause (see also Taylor 1985: 169). This example can be directly compared to the example in (14) of the subtype X7 from KT:

Here, as with (13), the subordinator (viz. açan ‘when’) is positioned between the subject and the finite verb of the adverbial clause in brackets (see also [8] that exemplifies a relative clause of the subtype X10 again from KT).

7 The transient behavior hypothesis

Beginning with this section, I move on to the solution that I propose in this paper for the X-clauses problem and the arguments in favor of this solution. As the main component of my proposal, I hypothesize that X-clauses are manifestations of ‘transient behavior’ in the shift from Turkic to SAE-type subordination in PRT syntax.^[17] Transient behavior, a concept borrowed from systems science, can be described as follows. When a system Σ in a steady state S₁ encounters an impact from the outside (i.e. a disturbance), Σ may adapt by shifting to a new steady state S₂, if the disturbance is long-lasting, which implies a new normal condition. During the shift from S₁ to S₂, Σ is said to exhibit transient behavior, an unsteady transition that typically involves oscillations in the values of Σ’s parameters (e.g. temperature, voltage) (Marshall 1978: 73–74; Mobus and Kalton 2014: 241–246, 375–385). This may be represented as in Figure 1.

Figure 1:

Transient behavior.

We can translate this description into the present context as follows. As Σ we have the subordination system of PRT, and S₁ and S₂ are Turkic and SAE-type subordination, respectively. The parameters of the subordination system, according to my formulation in Table 1, are the SC features of finiteness, clause position, and subordinator type and position, each taking a minimum of two values. Now, in the case of PRT, the majority languages of the Balkan sprachbund constitute a long-lasting disturbance that implies a new normal condition which is the SAE-type subordination seen in those majority languages. As the PRT subordination system shifts to SAE-type subordination in adaptation to long-term language contact, it shows transient behavior in the form of oscillations in the values of the four SC features. An oscillation (in feature value) can be defined as uncertainty and variation (of feature value) for now, and a more detailed discussion of the term can be found in Section 8. As these uncertain and variable SC feature values combine, they bring about interference patterns of sorts, which are the several kinds of X-clause attested in PRT. The preceding remarks are summed up in the statement in (15).

The transient behavior hypothesis could be contrasted with an alternative that may be called the ‘smooth transition hypothesis’. Under this alternative hypothesis, PRT subordination system would shift from Turkic to SAE-type subordination without showing any transient behavior in the form of oscillations. In more technical terms, while transient behavior follows a sine wave pattern, as shown in Figure 1, smooth transition would follow a sigmoid wave pattern (also called an ‘S-curve’). Presumably, this scenario would have different types of X-clause ordered chronologically, involving a stepwise transformation of Turkic SCs to SAE-type SCs, and the earlier types would be phased out in favor of the later ones, with few overlaps in their lifecycles. This stepwise transformation would presumably rely on a diachronic interpretation of the horizontal ordering of subtypes according to their degree of Indo-Europeanness in Table 3, and it would be a point in its favor if SCs did follow that trajectory (i.e. first changing into X1, then into X2 and so on) or a comparable one. Yet, the fact that the 13 subtypes of that hypothetical trajectory are attested in the same time period, rather than previous subtypes being phased out in favor of later ones, argues against this hypothesis. For this reason, I will not develop this second scenario in any detail.

In the light of my unified treatment of X-clauses, the following question may arise: are we inferring a single trajectory of change from what are essentially different corpora (i.e. texts from different varieties and historical periods [see Section 4]), which may, in fact, be reflecting different trajectories?

One answer to this question is that, as a corollary of the transient behavior hypothesis, there is no single well-defined trajectory as such. First, in the overall X-clause pattern, all SC feature values are equally distributed over the 13 subtypes, as we saw in Section 5.5. Furthermore, looking at this pattern in more depth, we will see in Section 8.2 that there are no correlations between feature values in Table 3. In other words, the PRT subordination system is not biased towards any class of feature values (Turkic, IE, or otherwise) or combinations of feature values when producing the 13 subtypes. In short, there appears not to be an X-clause pattern as such – it is all random. A consequence of this lack of trajectory or randomness would seem to be that not all subtypes need be attested in all varieties. In fact, any convergences in subtypes between varieties are likely just lucky coincidences. The only expected convergence between different varieties under the transient behavior hypothesis, then, is that they all go through oscillatory transitions.

The randomness of X-clause feature values and their combinations should, however, be distinguished from the pattern produced by the frequencies of subtypes, i.e. the bottom row of Table 3. The frequency distributions of the 13 subtypes point to a frequency drift that favors subtypes with higher Indo-Europeanness scores, as discussed in Section 11. The analysis in that section does carry a risk of generalizing across corpora that should perhaps not be compared. However, given that those corpora are all from varieties that are changing in the direction of SAE as observed by numerous independent studies (see e.g. Keskin 2023a, 2023b and the references therein), a frequency drift favoring the IE template is not unwarranted.

As for convergences between different historical periods, this is probably different than convergences between regional varieties. Convergence through time could be expected, as later historical stages of development of a given variety would normally carry at least some features of its previous historical stages. And therein lies again a risk of generalizing across incompatible corpora – this time greater than in the case of frequency drift.

8 Oscillations

As summed up in (15), I hypothesize X-clauses to be an outcome of the transient behavior exhibited by the PRT subordination system in its shift from the Turkic towards the SAE subordination model. Put differently, X-clauses are the various combinations of the SC feature values of the PRT subordination system, and these feature values show oscillations. But how should the term oscillation be understood in the present context? Take, for instance, the SC feature of clause position in Tables 1 and 3 and its two values [+post] and [−post]. We do not observe that a complement clause, say, is to the left of the matrix verb at one point in time and to its right at the next and then once more to its left, unlike what one would presumably expect in view of the literal meaning of the term oscillation.^[19] That being the case, we need to look for plausible approximations of literal oscillations or potential manifestations in the SC feature values of X-clauses of a more abstract notion of oscillation. Below, I first propose various alternatives, then discuss an implication of the idea that SC feature values of X-clauses oscillate, which corroborates this conceptualization.

9 X-clauses in Early Peripheral Rumelian

I now turn to historical data on X-clauses. Here, a particular category of text is of special importance: the so-called ‘transcription texts’ which are texts composed in Turkish during the Ottoman period by westerners and non-Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire in non-Ottoman scripts. Before I present any data from transcription texts, however, the question of how reliable they are should be addressed.

Whether transcription texts are reliable sources for historical linguistic studies of Turkish is a legitimate question given the following background (see e.g. Hazai 1990: 64–67; Stein 2016: 161–162). Turkology of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s was the scene of a debate focusing on the question of whether the Turkish observed in transcription texts (particularly Georgievits [1544] published by Heffening [1942] and Illésházy [1668] published by Németh [1970]) could be taken to consistently reflect any particular Turkish variety. Németh’s (1968, 1970 view was that these texts were representative of the Balkan dialects of Turkish. The opposing position was Kissling’s (1968) claim that the texts simply contained idiosyncratic linguistic mixtures and reflected an at best imperfectly learned Turkish superimposed on a Balkan substrate. The debate was settled in favor of the former position, and a body of scholarly work emerged that makes use of transcription texts as consistent sources of data for historical linguistic studies of Turkish (see e.g. Csató et al. 2016).

To return, now, to the main line of discussion, three transcription texts from the 15th and 17th centuries, which I examine below, contain expressions showing patterns which characterize X-clauses and provide evidence that X-clauses are not a new occurrence in PRT. By the late 15th century, when we first see X-clauses in historical texts along with SAE-type SCs, varieties of Turkish had been spoken in the Balkan sprachbund for about a hundred years (Artun 2013: xiv, xix; Johanson 2021: 132–133) and contact-induced syntactic changes seem to have already been underway (see e.g. Keskin 2022).

The first transcription text that I analyze is Pietro Ferraguto’s work in Latin script titled Grammatica turchesca (henceforth ‘Grammatica’) dated 1611 (published by Bombaci [1940]). It contains a dialogue titled Dialogo tra un Turco et un Christiano that is 1692 words long in Turkish, exemplifying the use of Turkish, from which my examples come (Stein 2014). The Grammatica is a rather clear example of RT, more precisely of Early WRT, as shown by Keskin (2023a, 2023b) and Stein (2016). This text is also by far the richer historical source of examples of X-clauses, as well as the other SC types attested in WRT, compared to the other two texts.

The other two texts are two short letters (i) by an Italian priest called Jacob Papas (lit. ‘Jacob the Priest’), written in Latin script and sent to the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II sometime in 1484–1486 (91 words, published by Brendemoen [1980]), and (ii) by a certain Yusof, written in Greek script and sent to Cem Sultan, a claimant to the Ottoman throne again sometime in 1484–1486 (131 words, also published by Brendemoen [1980]). Neither Jacob Papas’ nor Yusof’s letters have been treated as examples of RT by the Turkological literature – probably because they have not drawn much attention, however, they could be included in the same sphere of Turkish–SAE contacts along with my other sources, given their background. Indeed, Jacob Papas’ text even contains what appears to be an SAE-type SC introduced by neia (cf. ne in WRT) as connector – occurring twice in the text, its second occurrence as a proclitic in an X-clause (see [17b]) – which should justify its treatment as a PRT text: bil-mis ol-(a)sun [ neia men cul-un Jacob fran papas ] (know-prf be-2sg.opt conn 1sg servant-2sg.poss Jacob European priest) ‘May you be informed that I am Jacob Papas, your servant’. I will make use of these two texts as secondary sources as they contain a small number of X-clauses.

The Grammatica presents a rich and varied picture. Even then, X-clauses in this text present a unified class to some degree in that they are introduced exclusively by the subordinator sciú except for one example introduced by neredé ‘where’.^[20] As pointed out in Section 3, this justifies to a certain degree the treatment of X-clauses as a class of SC even though the data from modern PRT do not point to this. In (16) I give one example each from the three subtypes of X-clause attested in the text and the single example with neredé.^{[21] , [22] , [23]}

The SC in (16a) is prepositive and has a nonfinite verb form (i.e. an object relative) as predicate. The object relative suffix also functions as a subordinative element. Additionally, the clause contains a free clause-initial connector. Thus, it is of the subtype X3. The SC in (16b) differs in its position from the previous one and is consequently of the subtype X6. The SCs in (16c) and (16d) differ from the first example in the finiteness of their predicates. They are, then, of the subtype X9. Additionally, (16d) contains a subordinator different from the others (i.e. neredé).

As for Jacob Papas’ and Yusof’s letters, they contain a total of just three examples of X-clauses (in [17] and [18], respectively), not unusual given how short these texts are. These examples fit two patterns we have encountered in Table 3, namely subtypes X10 and X12.

In all three examples, the SCs are finite, postpositive, and contain free subordinative elements. They differ, however, in the positions of their subordinators. In examples (17a) and (18), the subordinators are clause-internal, which, in conjunction with the other SC features, makes these clauses instances of the subtype X10. In (17b), by contrast, we seem to have a combination of clause-initial and clause-internal connectors, the trademark of subtype X12. Here, I interpret the prothetic n- on the copula as a proclitic form of the connector ne typical of WRT, occurring as neia earlier in the text.^[24]

The immediately preceding descriptions are summarized in Table 6 with some additional information.

To sum up, five X-clause subtypes seen in Modern PRT can already be identified in historical texts, which amounts to about 38.5% of the subtypes attested today.^[25] All of these subtypes have survived to be joined by a further eight.

10 A comparison of the Grammatica with Modern Kosovar Turkish

With the historical perspective adopted in the previous section, we have seen that X-clauses have been present in PRT syntax since at least the 15th century, that their general properties have remained consistent throughout that period, and that they have diversified into further subtypes up until the modern era. We now change the angle of this diachronic outlook and focus on the percentage distributions of different clause types (i.e. Turkic, Persian-type, SAE-type, and X-clauses) in two different historical periods, namely Early WRT as reflected in the Grammatica and Modern WRT as reflected in KT, shown in Table 7. This comparison suggests a scenario consistent with X-clauses being products of the diachronic shift from Turkic to SAE-type subordination in PRT syntax.

According to these data, Turkic SCs in WRT decreased by 10.5% from the 17th century till the 21st. By contrast, there was a mere 4% increase in this period in the ratio of IE-type SCs (cf. ‘IE total’). Within the class of IE-type SCs, however, a major reshuffling took place: there was a 26% increase in the ratio of SAE-type clauses and a 22% decrease in Persian-type clauses. This is a clear picture of the shift in favor of SAE-type clauses and at the expense of the Turkic and Persian-type SCs which brought about the present-day distribution of clause types, as mentioned in Section 1. Finally, and most importantly for our purposes, X-clauses increased by 6.5%. What can this 6.5% increase be attributed to? Is it due to the Turkic-to-SAE shift, as I have proposed till now? What is the contribution of the Persian-to-SAE shift, if any?

We can probably safely speculate that the decrease in Persian-type clauses almost directly translated into the increase in SAE clauses, i.e. with little impact on the ratio of X-clauses, as the Persian-to-SAE shift presumably only involves replacing Persian subordinative elements with newly created SAE-type ones. Also, recall that X-clauses are mostly mixtures of Turkic and IE SC feature values which means that their structures are largely inconsistent with the Persian-to-SAE route due to the presence of Turkic features values. In other words, it is unlikely that the Persian-to-SAE shift contributed to the 6.5% increase in X-clauses to any significant degree. There is, however, evidence of a modest influence of this particular shift on the ratio of X-clauses. My sample of X-clauses includes seven examples exclusively from NRT that contain the double clause-initial subordinator ani ki whose second member is the Persian connector ki (see example [6]). These examples possibly reflect a preterminal stage of the process of replacing the Persian subordinative element and five of them belong to subtype X13, a subtype with no Turkic features. They constitute 13.5% of the X-clauses in NRT or 10.9% of all X-clauses in my sample.

Now, the WRT data (from both the Grammatica and Modern KT) contain no comparable examples and show a notable presence of Turkic feature values in X-clauses, which makes the contribution of the Persian-to-SAE shift to X-clauses improbable. Still, assuming that this influence was also present in WRT but that it could not be detected due to a sampling issue, suppose that 13.5% of the 6.5% increase in X-clauses in WRT (i.e. 0.9%) can be attributed to the Persian-to-SAE shift. The remaining approximately 5.6% increase in X-clauses would then be due to the Turkic-to-SAE shift. In other words, that much of the decrease in Turkic SCs would have gone to X-clauses. The remaining 4.9% decrease in Turkic would have fed into SAE-type SCs without us observing its effects on the percentage distribution of X-clauses, with the remaining 21.1% of the increase in SAE coming from the decrease in Persian-type clauses.

Connecting the observations above into a thread from Turkic to X-clauses to SAE, we could conclude that the shift in the WRT subordination system from Turkic to SAE-type clauses was facilitated by X-clauses. During this process, WRT grammar funneled clauses from the former to the latter through X-clauses, metaphorically speaking, and continues to do so in the present day.^[26]

11 Frequency drift

Observations on the interplay of the Indo-Europeanness scores and frequencies of subtypes, in conjunction with a comparison of Early and Modern PRT data, afford an additional argument for the view that X-clauses are a product of diachronic change. In Section 5.2 I pointed out that the Indo-Europeanness score is not intended as a potential indicator for diachronic change, however in conjunction with subtype frequency it does have implications in that regard.

First, in Modern PRT there seems to be a relationship between the Indo-Europeanness score and the frequency of a subtype, since frequencies tend to increase in tandem with Indo-Europeanness scores in Table 3 as we move away from the Turkic towards the IE column. This is shown graphically in Figure 2.

Figure 2:

Frequency drift in X-clauses.

A one-tailed Pearson’s correlation test showed that the medium-to-large positive correlation between the Indo-Europeanness scores of subtypes and their frequencies was marginally nonsignificant (r = 0.434, p = 0.07), which is likely to become significant with a larger sample. These observations suggest a frequency drift (cf. e.g. Laitinen 2012; Leech et al. 2009: 270) towards the IE template, towards SAE-type subordination to be more precise. When we now go back to the Early PRT data in Table 6, we see that there is a very strong negative correlation between Indo-Europeanness scores and frequencies, as shown by a one-tailed Pearson’s correlation test (r = −0.891, p = 0.021). This contrast between Early and Modern PRT data is consistent with (and perhaps even expected in the light of) the fact that the historical texts reflect PRT in the early phase of the shift towards SAE-type subordination. As SAE-type subordinate clauses have yet to gain preponderance at that early stage, we catch a glimpse of X-clause subtypes before their frequency drift towards SAE-type subordination has become discernable.

It should be pointed out that this drift is not predetermined in any way. Now, as observed in Sections 7 and 8, the pattern created by X-clause feature values and their combinations in Table 3 appears to be random. When this randomness is brought together with the frequency drift pattern, their synthesis points to the possibility that SC types in the contact situation that PRT has been in were subject to some sort of Darwinian process as follows (cf. Croft 2000). When Turkish came in contact with SAE languages, several new SC types were generated randomly. Some of these new SC types were selected by the linguistic environment of the Balkans and grew in frequency, while others were not and remained at low frequencies or shrank in frequency and perhaps disappeared. In other words, there were two complementary and mutually independent processes at play through which the linguistic system evolved: one, SC feature combination (that produced subtypes), and two, subtype selection (and their resultant propagation). We can refer to this proposal as the ‘selectionist hypothesis’.

As a final side note, the frequency fluctuations in Figure 2 from one subtype to the next would argue against the smooth transition hypothesis or at least interpreting this ordering of subtypes in its favor. If this arrangement of subtypes also reflected a diachronic sequence, one would expect earlier subtypes to consistently have lower frequencies than later subtypes as part of the smooth transition to SAE-type subordination and such fluctuations would be ruled out.

12 Contact theoretic and sociolinguistic perspectives

In this section, I move away from the approach to X-clauses taken in the preceding sections that emphasized the formal aspects of X-clauses and take up some psycho- and sociolinguistic issues surrounding the shift to SAE-type subordination in PRT and the attendant emergence of X-clauses. In Section 12.1, I propose a broader contact theoretic account as a context within which the shift to SAE-type subordination and X-clauses can be viewed. Section 12.2 describes various sociolinguistic factors and tests their potential effects on the use of X-clauses by means of two logistic regression models.

13 Conclusion

The Turkic varieties of the Balkans make use of two main subordination strategies that have diametrically opposed structural properties: the native Turkic model, which is in marked decline, and the Indo-European model, which is the preponderant model on average. In addition, Peripheral Rumelian Turkic, a subgroup of Balkan Turkic, makes use of several kinds of subordinate clause (‘X-clauses’) that do not fit the Turkic and Indo-European models well and allow for atypical mixtures of these two complementary models. Structurally, X-clauses can be said to be spread out over a spectrum between the Turkic and the Indo-European extremes. The first purpose of this paper has been to lay out the phenomenon of X-clauses as a well-defined research problem (‘the X-clauses problem’). As the second task of the paper, I put forward a hypothesis (‘the transient behavior hypothesis’) whereby X-clauses come about due to uncertainties in the values of the structural parameters of the Peripheral Rumelian subordination system (‘oscillations’). Such oscillations are typical of complex systems undergoing change and arise in the present case due to the shift in Peripheral Rumelian away from Turkic towards Indo-European subordinate clauses, more precisely towards Standard Average European-type subordinate clauses within the Indo-European class. I presented three arguments for the transient behavior hypothesis and the general diachronic approach that it is embedded in. The first argument involved showing how the structural parameters of X-clauses with seemingly unset, in-between, or contradictory values could be interpreted as oscillations. My second argument was of a more general nature and focused on the differences in the percentage distributions of different clause types (i.e. Turkic, Persian-type, Standard Average European-type, and X-clauses) in 17th century versus 21st century data, which suggest that the shift from Turkic to Standard Average European-type clauses was facilitated by X-clauses. Third, as another general argument for a diachronic approach to X-clauses, I showed that between Early and Modern Peripheral Rumelian there appears to have been a frequency drift from X-clauses that are structurally closer to Turkic subordinate clauses towards those that are more like Standard Average European subordinate clauses. Thus, X-clauses look like a bridge between the two diametrically opposed models from this perspective as well. Finally, I proposed that the shift to Standard Average European-type clauses and the attendant emergence of X-clauses took place due to language-internal processes in a context of language shift by Standard Average European speakers to Turkish.

List of abbreviations

1

first person

2

second person

3

third person

abl

ablative

acc

accusative

anom

action nominal

aor

aorist

conn

connector

cop

copula

dat

dative

dist

distal

evid

evidential

fnom

factive nominal

fut

future

gen

genitive

neg

negation

opt

optative

orel

object relative

pass

passive

pl

plural

poss

possessive

prf

perfect

prog

progressive

prox

proximal

pst

past

sg

singular