Gram - SEAS

210 7 GrammaticaLizatiolZ across clauses
In Modern Japanese, discourses of the following kind are possible:
(75) Ta ro-wa wakai(-yo). Ga, yoku yar-u(-yo).
Taro-TOP young(-yo). but well do-PRES(-yo)
'Taro is young. But he does a good job.' (Matsumoto 1988: 340)
Here the two clauses may have the particle -yo on the predicate; the meaning
of -yo is something like 'you know' in the colloquial sense of 'contrary to what
you might be thinking.' Ga is a weakly adversative conjunction. An equivalent
way of saying the same thing would be:
(76) Taro-wa wakai-ga, yoku yar-u(-yo).
Taro-TOP young-ga, well do-PRES(-yo)
'Although Taro is young, he does a good job. ' (Matsumoto 1988: 340)
In (76) ga is not a conjunction at the begi nning of the second clause, as it is in
(75), but a suffix on the predicate of the first clause. Moreover, yo, a sentence-(-inul
particle, may only appear on the second predicate in (76). Clearly (76) is a single
sentence, whereas (75) consists of two sentences, an analysis supported by the
intonation.
The hypothesis of unidirectionality from parataxis > hypotaxis > subordination
would predict that the type of sentence illustrated by (76) is derived
from a construction similar to that of (75). Being more integrative, the single
sentence would be thought to result from the collapsing of two separate sentences,
and the reanalysis of ga from an independent conjunction in the second
clause to a suffix in the first clause. However, the historical data in fact suggest
that the reverse occurred. Earlier Japanese texts point to sentences of the type
in (76) as antecedents of those like (75), and indeed suggest that the type in
(75) is relatively recent. The latter start to be recorded in the seventeenth century,
especially in popular play scripts and similar texts suggesting a colloquial
style.
Another somewhat similar instance of great interest is what has been construed
as the development in spoken German since about 1980 of main clause (nonverb-final)
order for clauses marked with weil 'because' and obwohl 'although'
(it is, however, possible that this order difference existed earlier but was simply
not recorded in written language, or noted by prescriptivists). In standard German
these clauses have verb-final word order, are non-assertive, and typically occur
within the same intonation contour as the main clause, as in (77). They are therefore
considered to be subordinate clauses. In spoken German, however, they now
often also occur with non-final word order, and separate intonation contours; they
are assertive and non-subordinate, as in (78) (Gunther 1996). The difference is
illustrated with weil 'because':