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Abstract
Semitic particles descended from *wa and *pa, typically glossed as ‘and’ and ‘and then’, respectively, are also used in many languages to introduce the apodosis of a conditional sentence, following the protasis. They may also be used, in these languages, to introduce the rest of the sentence following sentence-initial adverbial expressions of time, place, cause, and comparison, as well as following sentence-initial nominal expressions referring to entities or sets of entities. While it is clear that the particles in such contexts do not function as coordinating conjunctions, it is not clear what function they do have, or what, if anything, the diverse adverbial and nominal elements preceding the *wa or *pa in such cases have in common. In the literature, *wa and *pa in these contexts are often referred to simply as the *wa and *pa “of apodosis.” In recent decades, multiple scholars have suggested independently that structures involving such instances of *wa and *pa are “topic–comment” constructions, in which the *wa or *pa serves to mark the beginning of the comment. While not a full solution, since there is no consensus among linguists as to what topic and comment themselves are, the convergence on this area of the linguistic literature indicates a promising direction for a fresh study of the phenomenon in the Semitic languages, and also suggests that the Semitic data may be relevant to the ongoing discussion of topic and comment in general linguistics. This dissertation begins with a survey of the secondary literature on the *wa and *pa of apodosis, then considers the linguistic literature related to topic and comment. Corpus studies of the phenomenon in Biblical Hebrew, Canaano-Akkadian, Ugaritic, and Sabaic constitute the core chapters; the findings are then set in diachronic perspective through grammar surveys of the remaining Semitic languages. It is argued that in most of the languages concerned, what unifies the elements preceding the *wa or *pa is a pragmatic function called “Orientation.”