Re: Relative clauses

Henrik wrote:
<<
But it may equally be possible to express this as:

     The man is eating, X is tall.
     \_R_____________/
   \_                  _M________/
         ^
         \_ modified noun

Where X is some kind of 'reverse' relative pronoun that is used in the
matrix clause to 'import' the modified noun from the relative clause.
(This is just an example, I can think of other possibilities to move
the noun from matrix to relative clause.)
 >>

This reminds me of Moro.  We were never able to successfully
elicit a "true" relative clause, which might mean that (a) Moro
doesn't have them, or (b) we (as a class) needed to expand our
definition or relative clause.  So let's say you have those two
ideas (the man is eating and the man is, well, let's say white,
since I know that word).  You'd do it like this:

udZi kasa keib@tSo.
/man eat white/

Moro almost never uses pronouns, so what this is is "The man
is eating, he's white".  You can switch it up, too:

udZi keib@tSo kasa
/man white eat/

"The man's white, he's eating".

Interestingly  enough, you can kind of move these clauses away
from each other:

udZi kafo Damala iki kasa.
/man hit camel this eat/

And this is "The man that's eating hit the camel", or "The man that
hit the camel is eating".  No difference.  This kind of works like
you mentioned, where /iki/ is kind of like a relative pronoun.
It doesn't quite work out that swimmingly, however.  There are
several things that led us to believe that it, in fact, wasn't a
relative
pronoun (then several more that convinced us we were initially
right [then several more which changed our minds again]).  It was
kind of an issue that never got resolved.  It may all just be
analytic (though it doesn't use any conjunctions, which Moro does
have and uses quite easily).

-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

-Jim Morrison

http://dedalvs.free.fr/