Based on a geographically and genetically diverse sample of 80 languages,I will provide, firstly, a synchronic documentation of the grammatical properties of purpose clauses. The central goal is to uncover the unity and diversity of the linguistic
means by which purposive relations are encoded in human languages. Explanations for universal tendencies of morphosyntactic coding will be sought in
the conceptual characteristics of purposive situations, in the communicative functions of purpose clauses, and in the cognitive-psychological mechanisms involved in language use. Therefore, the explanatory apparatus to be applied is embedded in the more general functional and particularly usage-based approach to language structure.
Secondly, purpose clauses will be investigated in relation to other types of complex sentences. By virtue of modifying the proposition in the matrix clause,
2 A Typology of Purpose Clauses purpose clauses are a specific semantic type of adverbial clause combining.
It will be shown, however, that purposive relations deviate from typical adverbial relations in a number of important ways, and at the same time need to be characterized by features commonly associated with other types of complex sentences, notably complementation structures. This constellation often results in peculiar coding properties of purposive constructions that are not shared by (most) other
adverbial clauses in a given language. Moreover, at the synchronic level, one frequently gets the impression that purpose clauses are under a certain classificatory tension in the variation space that complex sentences unfold across languages.
They appear to be ‘expelled’ by adverbial clauses as a set and show considerable overlap instead with complement clauses, (some) relative clauses and the domain of deontic modality. This static impression is, however, a result of principled pathways of diachronic extension, which are rooted in cognitive and communicative pressures on the use of purpose clauses in actual discourse. For this reason, the
typological survey of purpose clauses presented here will also take stock of what is known about the historical pathways along which purpose constructions develop. The goals of my investigation are reflected in the structure of the book. In Chapter 2, I will outline the theoretical and methodological foundations for the
cross-linguistic study of purpose clauses. This will include some important theoretical premises of functional-typological work, a notional (i.e. structure-independent) definition of purpose clauses ensuring cross-linguistic comparability, and a presentation and justification of the language sample that forms the database of the current study.
An important methodological aspect in regard to which
this book deviates from other typological works is the tight integration of language-particular and cross-linguistic work. Specifically, we will exploit the rich
data on English purposive constructions supplied by previous research in formal, discourse-pragmatic and historical linguistics, which often provides useful parameters and stimuli for a systematic cross-linguistic investigation.
Conversely, a usage-based approach to typological distributions requires us to relate cross-linguistic
data about grammars to actual usage events, particularly exhaustive frequency data. At several stages of the investigation, we will thus draw on corpora of English to supplement (or motivate) typological generalizations. In an incidental
way, then, the present study thus also aims to make a contribution to a recent research programme in English linguistics (cf. Kortmann 2007), which seeks to assess the relative typicality of grammatical phenomena of English against the variation space of human languages.
Chapter 3 constitutes the first (and largest) of two empirical parts of the book. It will document and analyse the ways in which purposive relations are encoded in the world’s languages. Since it is common for one language to have several strategies for the expression of purpose, it was essential to compile a database of all distinct purposive constructions found across the 80 languages sampled. This procedure
does not only ensure that less common coding patterns are considered as well; it also allows for precise quantitative analyses since constructions define much
narrower, fine-grained typological variables and categories than languages. Working with these variables, in turn, paves the way for the application of significance tests whenever feasible. The chief grammatical properties to be analysed in this way are the form of the verb, argument structure configurations (including co-reference patterns), clause-linking and purposive morphology, the positioning patterns
of purpose clauses and, finally, some selected semantic and pragmatic idiosyncrasies such as the encoding of negative purpose in so-called avertive (‘lest’) constructions. Significant distributions and correlations will be formulated as probabilistic implications, each of which is tested for geographical independence so that areal patterns can be distinguished from genuinely universal tendencies.
Chapter 4 will be concerned with the place of purpose clauses in the conceptual and syntactic space of complex sentence constructions. This requires a shift from the construction-specific analysis to a ‘whole-language’ perspective since we wish to probe into the synchronic connection of purpose clauses with other types of complex sentences. By systematically relating purposive constructions to all traditional classes of clause combining (adverbial clauses, complementation, relativization, coordination), a special status of purpose clauses in the typology of complex sentences will be empirically uncovered. Finally, we will explore the historical trajectories that give rise to this peculiar synchronic status.
The concluding Chapter 5 contains a brief summary of the most important results of this study and points to some promising directions for future research. For
environmental reasons, the publication will dispense with an elaborate appendix.
On the whole, I hope that the integration of typological and language-specific analyses, the combination of synchronic and diachronic perspectives, and a synthesis
of documentation and explanation will provide a comprehensive and coherent picture of purpose clauses that unveils universal preferences in coding purposive
relations, but at the same time does justice to the fascinating breadth of variation that the grammars of human languages display.
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A Typology of Purpose Clauses
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