Hi!
Patrick Littell <puchitao@...> writes:
>...
> Here are some examples of internally-headed relative clauses, if anyone
> still wants some. ...
Yes, they are really interesting!
> The following is from Bambara, a Mande language of West
> Africa, adapted from Comrie (1989).
>
> N ye so ye.
> I PAST house see.
>
> Tye be [ n ye so min ye ] dyo.
> man PRES I PAST house MARK see build.
Wow, so the reference marker of Tyl-Sjok is an anadewism! :-)
Could've guessed so...
> Marking the internal head is useful for reducing ambiguity. Consider this
> example from Imbabura Quechua:
>
> [ Kan kwitsa-man kwintu-ta villashka ]-ka sumaj-mi.
> you girl to story ACC telling -TOP pretty-VALIDATOR.
Looks just like the Japanese/Korean style.
>...
> [Tenay ?wa :?wa :w] -pu -Ly ?ciyawx.
> "I will sing in the house I saw yesterday."
Dito.
>...
> 1) Do the inverse of Malagasy: require that only the subject can be
> expressed by an IHRC and use the inventory of voices to realize the argument
> as subject. I like this one, although it forbids two IHRCs in a sentence.
> But plenty of languages have similar restrictions, like forbidding the
> question "Who killed whom?"
Why would this forbid two relative clauses in a sentence?
Actually, S11 (Tesäfköm) will work like this: the topic (=fronted
noun) in the relative clause is the reference.
> 2) Require "equi-type" relative clauses, in which the head plays the same
> role (semantic or grammatical) in both the main clause and the relative
> clause.
That's also fun.
> 3) Do nothing. Examples in which real ambiguity occurs are pretty rare,
> except when taken out of context and used as examples of ambiguity.
That's an option in Tyl Sjok. Does Bambara allow dropping
the 'min' marker?
**Henrik