How the cause and purpose syncretism was lost: the tale of two Russian subordinators

In early nineteenth-century Russian, two complex subordinators – dlja togo, čto(by) and zatem, čto(by) – exhibited syncretism between cause and purpose. Over the course of the century, this syncretism was lost: while the purpose uses remained frequent, the causal uses largely decayed by the end of the nineteenth century. Based on quantitative corpus data, I trace this shift over the course of the nineteenth century. I argue that the two interpretations were weakly differentiated at the beginning of the century, but gradually became firmly tied with a mood distinction. Eventually, the subjunctive purpose construction, which involves čtoby , remained robust, while its indicative causal counterpart, which involves čto , went out of use. This divergence is explained by the paradigmatic associations with related constructions: notably, the preposition dlja lost its causal meaning, contributing to the decline of dlja togo, čto ; and the interrogative purpose adverbial začem contributed to the retention of the purpose subordinator based on zatem . Finally, the default simplex purpose subordinator čtoby reinforced the complex purpose constructions containing čtoby , especially in focused contexts.