Split Grammaticalization: Romanian iar, Adverb and Conjunction
Split Grammaticalization: Romanian iar, Adverb and Conjunction

Summary/Abstract: Of a controversial origin, IAR is attested from the oldest Romanian texts with two functions: (i) as an adverb meaning ‘repeated event’, cf. Engl. ‘again’, which denies the expectation that the predicate determined by the adverb is not identical with previous events present in the speakers’ memory, and (ii) as a conjunction, denying the expectation that the predicate of the second sentence is semantically identical with the predicate of the previous sentence. This evolution shows once again the fact that some language changes can be accounted for only by including pragmatic dimensions such as expectation and implicature in the description of the conveyed information.

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