Insubordination and what happens after it

Abstract

One of the sources of irrealis markers is former markers of conditional sentences, both protases and apodoses, both factual and counterfactual. The development, amply documented cross-linguistically, is that of insubordination: a former marker of subordination is used as an irrealis marker in main clauses. However, the next stage of development is not commonly observed: when irrealis markers that came into being as the result of insubordination and are used in main clauses spread back to their original locus, conditional sentences. The paper deals with a clear attestation of this pattern in Hittite, an extinct Indo-European language. It is argued that the development is part of a linguistic cycle of the ‘broken’ kind, i.e., that the cycle changed by other processes simultaneously operating in the language.