Grado de severidad según el tipo de limitación

As has been stated above, the disjunctive marker in Macedonian is ili ‘or’. Other ways of forming disjunctions in Macedonian are through correlative coordination ili… ili ‘either… or’, dali… ili ‘is it… or’, dali… dali ‘is it… is it…’

First, consider examples (70a-b) in which prototypical instances of disjunction in Macedonian are given.

38 70a) Ti da mi najdeš lek za debelina ili... ḱe ti ja skratam glavata!

ti da mi najde-š lek za debel-ina ili

CL.2SG.NOM SBJ CL.1SG.DAT find-2SG.PRES cure for fat-NMLZ DISJ

ḱe ti ja skrata-m glava-ta

FUT CL.2SG.DAT CL.3SG.F.ACC to.shorten-1SG.PRES head-DET.F ‘You better find me a cure against obesity or... I will cut your head off!’ (narrative B 44:08)

b) A naš ili Grk?

a naš ili grk

OP.CONJ 1PL.POSS DISJ greek

‘But (was he) a Macedonian or a Greek?’ (lit: but one of ours or a Greek?) (conversation B&V 47:47)

In (70a) the disjunctive marker ili ‘or’ coordinates two clauses: ti da mi najdeš lek za debelina ‘find me a cure against obesity’ and ‘I will cut your head of’. In (70b) ili ‘or’ coordinates two nouns: naš ‘one of ours’ and Grk ‘Greek’. (70b) is taken from a conversation in which a person tells another person about how a hotel owner in the Greek province Macedonia made a mistake with her booking, to which her interlocutor replies: ‘But was he a Macedonian or a Greek?’, pitting the two major ethnicities that live in that area against each other.

The disjunctive marker can also take a less canonical position, as shown in (71). 71) i toa trieset liri ili pedeset

i toa trieset lir-i ili pedeset CONJ that thirty lira-PL DISJ fifty

‘And that thirty or fifty Ottoman lire.’ (narrative M 05:13)

It is interesting in the above example (71) that the structure is [NUM N disj NUM] rather than [NUM disj NUM N]. This could imply that the numeral pedeset ‘fifty’ is interpreted as a noun, thus the structure would be [N disj N]. The disjoint [pedeset] can be seen as elliptical form of [pedeset liri], thus interpreted nominally, similarly to how bare adjectives are interpreted as a head.

Thus while the coordinator i ‘and’ simply adds entities, the addition of li ‘FOC’ combines each conjunct with focus, thus pitting them against each other. Thus, the speaker restricts the domain of the alternatives denoted by focus when using a disjunction (Arsenijević 2011).

Ili ‘or’ can also appear as a correlative, as shown in (72).

72) Učitelite se ili Makedonci ili bea doveduvani od Srbija i Bugarija.

učitel-i-te ili Makedonec-i ili bea doveduva-n-i

teacher-PL-DET.PL DISJ Macedonian-PLDISJ be.3PL.PST lead-PTCP-PL od Srbja i Bugarija

from Serbia CONJ Bulgaria

‘The teachers are either Macedonian or they have been brought from Serbia and Bulgaria.’ In (72) the structure ili… ili ‘either… or’ correlates two unequal clauses: the noun Makedonci ‘Macedonians’ on the one hand, and the whole clause bea doveduvani od Srbija i Bugarija ‘were brought from Serbia and Bulgaria’ on the other.

Furthermore, the correlative can also appear with the question particle in the structures dali… ili ‘is it… or’ and dali… dali ‘is it… is it’.

39 questions, as shown in (73).

73) Dali da go spasuvam ognov ili da go spasuvam čovekov?

da-li da go spasuv-am ogn-ov

SBJ-FOC SBJ CL.3SG.M.ACC save-1SG fire-PROX.M

ili da go spasuv-am čovek-ov

DISJ SBJ CL.3SG.M.ACC save-1SG man-PROX.M

‘Shall I save this fire or shall I save this man?’ (elicitation B 01:03:25)

The structure dali… dali ‘Q… Q’can be used to express disjunction, as is shown in example (74). 74) Dali e akvarium, dali e pogled od ozgora vo nekoje ezerce ili barička nekoja?

da-li e akvarium da-li e pogled

SBJ-FOC be.3SG.PRES aquarium SBJ-FOC be.3SG.PRES view

od odozgora vo ne-koj-e ezer-ce ili

from above in INDF-who-N lake-DIM DISJ

bari-čka ne-koj-a pond-DIM INDF-who-F

‘Is it an aquarium or is it some lake or pond viewed from above?’ (elicitation B 59:27)

The structure of this disjunction takes the form of two juxtaposed propositional questions with dali ‘Q’, i.e., dali VP, dali VP? ‘is it…, is it…?’

Example (74) is uttered in reply to a picture of a landscape that contains a surface of water (see Appendix 1). In (74) there are two levels of disjunction: on the one hand, the aquarium is being pitted against the lake with the structure dali VP, dali VP. On the other hand, the disjunctive marker ili ‘or’ denotes that the speaker doesn’t know whether the watery entity is a lake or a pond. The

constituent [ezerca ili barička] is seen as a general term for a water surface; both the lake and the pond are salient example of the set of water surfaces. Thus, the similarities between a lake and a pond are bigger than the similarities between either a lake or a pond and an aquarium.

The disjunctive strategies in Macedonian are the following: (i) the disjunctive marker ili, which consists of i ‘and’ and li ‘FOC’ as a single coordinator, (ii) a correlative construction with ili, (iii) a correlative construction with dali ‘Q’ and ili ‘or’ and (iv) a correlative construction with dali ‘Q’. Furthermore, we have seen multiple correlative coordinations throughout this chapter. All of the correlative coordinations are listed in Table 7.

form gloss meaning of correlative meaning of single coordinator

i…i ‘both… and’ conjunction conjunction

ili.. ili ‘either… or’ disjunction disjunction

dali X dali Y ‘is it X or is it Y’ disjunction propositional question

dali X ili Y ‘is it X or Y’ disjunction alternative question

ni… ni ‘neither… not’ negative conjunction negation

Table 7: correlative conjunctions

In these tables we see that the question form can have a disjunctive interpretation when in a correlative coordination construction, thus there is a relation between questions and disjunctions. Furthermore, like ili, one of the adversative coordinations is also formed with li: ali ‘but’. In the following section I will look at the adversative coordination.

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