Klallam Grammar

30 Conditional Clauses

Every language has at least one way of expressing conditions on some event. English, for example, uses the word ‘if’ to indicate a condition, as in ‘If I whistle, you jump.’ Notice that there are two events here: ‘I whistle’ and ‘you jump.’ These are called clauses. The main clause in this example sentence is ‘you jump’; the condition clause is ‘I whistle.’
English has another way of stating a condition, as in ‘When I whistle, you jump.’ In this example ‘when’ means basically the same thing as ‘if’ in the previous example.
Klallam has two ways of expressing conditions. The first construction, which you will learn in §30.1, is the subordinate conditional, which is very similar to the English construction with a subordinate ‘if’ or ‘when’ clause. The second construction, covered in §30.2, is very common in Klallam, but unusual from the point of view of English and the other European languages. In this construction there are two main clauses—one with a special verb meaning ‘if’ or ‘when.’
A very common use of conditional expressions is in talking about hypothetical situations. In §30.3 you will learn how to express hypothetical situations in Klallam.
 

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