On Factivity, Emotivity and Choice of Conjunction in Yiddish

Abstract

Modern Yiddish has two subordinating conjunctions introducing complement clauses, az and wos, the latter being an innovation, functionally inspired by Slavic. Our study deals with the distribution of the two conjunctions and with the factors influencing that distribution. We observe that wos is confined to a semantically marked subgroup of factive complement clauses, namely that of factives-emotives.