Gramatikalizacija subordinatora ukoliko u toku 19. veka na primeru tekstova administrativno-pravnog stila

Abstract

According to the views on the grammaticalization of subordinators and dependent clauses in historical syntax, we follow the grammaticalization of conditional clauses introduced by the conjunction ukoliko during the 19th century in the 19th century Serbian legal texts. Modern grammar literature treats the conjunction ukoliko as a subordinator of conditional sentences that occurs in all functional styles, in three positions in the sentence. Relevant grammars of the 19th and early 20th centuries do not record this conjunction. The initial hypothesis is that the conditional clause with the conjunction ukoliko was grammaticalized during the 19th century. To verify this, we consulted administrative-legal texts from the 19th and early 20th centuries. We found that the original structure of this construction is a quantitative and proportional sentence introduced by the conjunction ukoliko (sometimes with the correlative utoliko). The resulting construction was related to the postposition. The process of grammaticalization, which lasted during the 19th century, included a reanalysis of conjunctions (ukoliko – utoliko), a change in the semantics of the entire clause, which eventually led to its free distribution. The theoretical implications of the work refer to the fact that the process of grammaticalization in historical syntax is not only observed at the level of grammaticalization of conjunctions, but the clause as a whole is taken into account, which also refers to the change in its semantics and its distribution.