Future conditionals in Lycian

Abstract

Abstract Lycian funerary inscriptions, being overall legal statements regarding the correct management of the tomb after the death of its owner, comprise many future conditional clauses consisting of two types, paratactic and hypotactic. In the latter a preposed relative clause precedes a resumptive main clause, while in the former two adjoining main clauses are interpreted as protasis and apodosis without any obligatory subordinator. In the last case, the general rule is that some constituent pertaining to the preceding prohibition clause against unauthorized burial undergoes left dislocation, the contrastive topic pointing to the conditional character of the sentence. The lack of an overt subordinator in the paratactic type - the odd modal particle e͂‘if’ is at best optional - points to an archaism in Lycian, as opposed to Hittite and Luwian. This paper aims at providing a critical description of the future conditionals in the corpus, accounting for how they are formed and used.