Subordinates and their equivalents in Balochi
Résumé
A. The few works that have treated subordination in Balochi at all have presented the topic from a morphosyntactic point of view, listing conjunctions and noting which verbal morphology is used with them (see JAHANI / KORN 2009: 678ff. for a summary).
With this approach, Balochi subordination appears to be closely parallel to Persian: ki is the default subordinator; it also introduces quoted speech and relative clauses (cf. KORN / ÖHL 2008 for New Persian ke and JAHANI 2008 for Balochi relative clauses). Most other subordinating conjunctions are combinations with ke, e.g. waxt-ē ki “when (lit. the time REL)”. Essentially, then, adverbial subordinates are relative clauses in a way quite parallel to what CREISSELS (2006: 192f.) notes for French subordinates such as par-ce que “because (= lit. by-this REL)”.
B. In our speech data recorded among Black Baloch in Southern Balochistan, overt subordination of the type just mentioned does occur, chiefly with the subordinator ki, which here covers a broad range of meanings (including temporal, causal ones, etc.). However, such patterns are strikingly infrequent in our data. Even relative clauses are very rare. Conversely, passages that one would be tempted to translate by subordinates are mostly without overt marker of subordination.
We argue that intonation, repetition and the use of sequentials are ways of marking subordination. Concerning intonation, CREISSELS (2006:185) notes its use as a marker of subordination for spoken French (« Il faut notamment tenir compte du fait que la construction d‘une phrase complexe peut reposer uniquement sur l‘intonation. Par exemple, en français oral, une intonation particulière suffit pour indiquer qu‘un enchaînement tel que Tu as faim, je te donne à manger doit être reconnu comme une phrase complexe avec une relation de type conditionnel entre les deux unités phrastiques (̳si tu as faim, je te donne à manger‘) et à l‘oral, il est impossible de confondre une telle phrase complexe avec une séquence de deux phrases assertives indépendantes »). Quite frequently and perhaps even regularly, intonation is combined with repetition, particularly to convey temporal subordination. Another strategy used in combination with intonation, and sometimes in combination with repetition, is the use of sequentials, viz. o “and” and nī “now”, which introduces either the subordinate or the matrix clause.
C. We argue that several factors may play a role in the different systems of subordination observed. Clearly, there are differences in register and style: the speech of the Black Baloch is the spoken style of a particularly marginalised group of society, while previous descriptions of Balochi grammar have more relied on written material as well as on grammatical descriptions of recordings effected among less marginalised groups.
This receives confirmation from the fact that most overt markers of subordination are clearly borrowed from (or via) Persian (cf. JAHANI / KORN 2009: 678). We argue that ki is likely to be a borrowing, too, since its development implies sound changes regular for Persian, but not for Balochi (indeed, JAHANI 2008: 163 discusses the possibility that the structure of relative clauses may be copied from Persian).
This suggests the hypothesis that the entire pattern of conjunctional subordination could be copied from Persian, thus particularly prominent in written styles and less so in others. Intonation, repetition and the use of sequentials may then be the inherited means to express subordination.