Ritva Laury

Syntactically Non-Integrated Finnish Jos ‘If’-Conditional Clauses as Directives

This article concerns the use of independent jos ‘if’-clauses as directives (requests, proposals, and suggestions) in Finnish everyday conversation. It shows that clause types which are traditionally considered subordinate can be used without any main clauses and, thus, do not project further talk to follow in the same turn. Other participants respond to the directive without waiting for a subsequent main clause to be produced. The grammatical form of the jos-clause is shown to be linked both to the kind of directive action it accomplishes and to the contingencies associated with it.