Adverbial free relative clauses, in early Indo-European languages and generally

Question

By "adverbial free relative clause" (maybe there's a better term for this) I mean a relative clause which (a) is headed by an indefinite fused relative pronoun, e.g. English whoever, whatever, and (b) has no antecedent in the main clause and thus no close syntactic connection with it (hence "adverbial"). English examples:

a. Whatever the weather is tonight, we'll go out.

b. Whoever wrote that paper, it's silly.

c. Whichever road you take, you'll get to London.

My questions are:

1. Does this construction exist in early Indo-European languages (e.g. Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Hittite)? If not, how do these languages express such meanings?

2. What syntactic and semantic analyses of such clauses (in any language) have been proposed? They have the unusual property of not having an antecedent and modifying an otherwise syntactically independent sentence, which is odd for relative clauses.

Answer 1

After a bit of searching I can now partially answer my own question 1, about these constructions in Latin and Greek: apparently both have basically the same construction as English, using an indefinite relative pronoun (usually quisquis in Latin, ὅστις or ὁστισοῦν in Greek) and a verb in the indicative.

Latin:

hostem qui feriet, mihi erit Carthaginiensis, quisquis erit 'whoever kills an enemy will be a Carthaginian in my eyes, whoever he may be' (Cicero Balbus 22.51)

ita ille faxit Iuppiter, ut ille palam ibidem adsiet, quisquis illest, qui adest a milite 'I wish Jupiter would so make it, that he were openly in the same place with me, whoever he is, that has arrived from the Captain' (Plautus Pseudolus 4.1.22-4)

Greek:

δεινῶς γ᾽ ἔοικεν ἀποκεκρυμμένην τέχνην ἀνευρεῖν ὁ Τεισίας ἢ ἄλλος ὅστις δή ποτ᾽ ὢν τυγχάνει καὶ ὁπόθεν χαίρει ὀνομαζόμενος 'a wonderfully hidden art it seems to be which Tisias has brought to light, or some other, whoever he may be and whatever country he is proud to call his own!' (Plato Phaedrus 273c)

Greek additionally has a slightly different construction which places the free relative clause inside a conditional:

μὴ ἐπιτρέπειν τῷ ἀσεβοῦντι μηδ᾽ ἂν ὁστισοῦν τυγχάνῃ ὤν '[we ought not] to let him who acts impiously go unpunished, no matter who he may be', lit. 'not even if he happens to be whoever'. (Plato Euthyphro 5e)

Answer 2

It exists in Greek and Latin, and probably in most other Indo-European languages—at least in the ones I know: Dutch, French, German, Italian.

In order to create an indefinite relative pronoun in Latin, one uses an extended form of the interrogative pronoun, doubling it, so quidquid instead of quid "what"; or one adds -cumque to the relative pronoun, so quodcumque instead of quod "(that) which". The indicative mood is used.

Catullus describes how Egnatius is always grinning, whatever happens, Carmen 39, 5–7:

... si ad pii rogum fili [if at the pyre of a loyal son]
lugetur, orba cum flet unicum mater, [people mourn, when the bereft mother bemoans her only son,]
renidet ille. quidquid est, ubicumquest, [he grins. Whatever it is, wherever he is,]
quodcumque agit, renidet. ... [whatever is happening, he grins]

In Greek, there are many ways to form indefinite pronouns. One can add a form of the interrogative pronoun tis to the relative pronoun hos, but there are other ways. The indefinite clause is normally in the subjunctive mood. An example from Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.3, 6:

ἄλλοις μὲν ἀρέσκειν δύναται, ἐμοὶ δὲ ὅπου ἂν παρῇ πανταχοῦ καὶ ἔργῳ καὶ λόγῳ ζημία μᾶλλον ἢ ὠφέλειά ἐστιν.
[he can be pleasant to others, but to me, whenever he is there, he is in all respects, both in deed and in word, harmful rather than helpful.]
Marchant (1923) translates: "he is pleasant enough to other people, but whenever he is near me, he invariably says and does more to hurt than to help me".

It is much easier to find an antecedentless (and postcedentless) indefinite pronoun when it refers to something adverbial (a time or place) rather than a thing or person. Both Latin and Greek are (far) more likely to add an antecedent than English or Dutch. I was able to find a Latin example, but not a Greek example. Nevertheless, I think the origin of our antecedentless indefinite clause lies in indefinite clauses that do have antecedents, as in Latin and Greek.

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An different but interesting development in French is that of the word quoique, "what which", similar to Latin quidquid. It can mean "whatever"; but it has also developed a meaning "however", and even "although", as a full conjunction. That is, there is no longer a "what" to fulfil the function of a subject or object in the subordinate clause. La Harpe to Voltaire (s.xviii):

Quoique éloigné du centre de notre littérature, vous en êtes toujours l'âme et l'honneur. [However far removed from the centre of our literature, you are still/always its soul and honour.] Modifying the adjective éloigné.

Calmet (s.xviii):

Les écrivains sacrés, quoique remplis d'une lumière supérieure et infallible, s'expriment d'ordinaire d'une façon humaine et populaire; ... [The sacred writers, though full of a superior and infallible light, normally expressed themselves in a human and popular manner; ...] Modifying the entire clause (leaving out the finite verb as in English).

Indefinite relative clauses seem to be intimately connected with a concessive ("although") connotation in many languages.

Answer 3

In PIE such construction would be conducted with a word, consisting of the root a̯ei̯- "always, ever, constant, the same" and a interrogative pronoun, like q̆oteros "which", with a suffix -i to form adverb (formerly, locative case):

a̯i̯q̆oteri - either of the two (the English word either origins exactly this way, via Old English æghwæðer)

a̯i̯q̆ea̯li - of whatever sort, equally

etc.

A̯i̯q̆oteri tua̯ pnta̯oi̯ e̯eisi u̯ici bheue̯si. - Either road you go, you will reach the village.

Note that English word "whatever" also produced from the same roots: q̆od "who" + a̯ei̯- "always".

Answer 4

You're talking about a circumstantial clause, which refers to a set of circumstances which help explain the rest of the sentence. Circumstantial clauses do appear in Latin, and therefore most of the romance languages (e.g. Spanish, French, Italian, etc.). Although they use relative pronouns, circumstantial clauses aren't relative clauses at all (at least not in Latin).

In Latin, a circumstantial clause always includes the word "cum" (which means "with", as in "magna cum laude" ("with great praise")). "Cum" isn't a relative pronoun at all; it's actually a preposition.