Re: Creative ways to form relative clauses?

Hello, I've just put information about relative clauses in Silindion online at Frathwiki.
I'll summarize the information here.

Silindion creates a relative clause in three ways, depending on the type of thing relativized.
Common to all three is the presence of the relative pronoun 'te/ta' (which varies
according to animacy). In addition, some relative clause types have a
relativizer, which is a piece of morphology that corresponds (in some ways) to
English "that". (In fact, it's more like Old English 'the', where <th> =
thorn).

Argument Relative Clauses:
Antecedent + Pronoun + Relativizer + Clause

tilisi     i     nan          te     yu-naksi  i     narin
I-see   the  man-acc  who  rel-killed  the  bird-acc
"I see the man who (that) killed the bird"

This is very similar to English, but the main difference is that addition of the
relativizer on the verb. The relativizer varies according to the animacy of the
antecedent. 'yo/yu (Etc)' for animate and 'yova' for inanimate.

Prepositional Relative Clauses:
Type 1:  No Overt Preposition.
In this type, the relative pronoun inflects in an oblique case.

mirisi  i      marna      tavi         yova lissusi
I-love  the  town-acc  which-loc rel    I-live
"I love the town in which I live"

This type is used for simple prepositional relations like 'in, at, to' etc.

Type 2: Overt Preposition + Resumptive:

mirisi i     merne             ta      yova ayaneisi ophu
I-love the mountain-acc  which rel     I-went    up-it
"I love the mountain which I went up"

This type is used for more complex prepositional relations like 'up, towards, through, by' etc.

Genitive Relative Clauses:
These vary along various axes. The first is if the possessed object is the subject
of the subordinated verb

A)
Type 1: Fronting
In this type, mainly used with inanimates, the possessed object is fronted to
before the subordinate verb:
The pronoun is inflected in genitive case.

silinya tariyova            nan   ahwili mi
stars   which-gen-REL  light  fell     down
"Stars whose light fell down."

Type 2: Internally Headed
In this type, mainly used with animates, the possessed object is kept in its
place in the subordinated clause:
In this type, there is no relativizer (although this could be because it's found in poetry)

noire na    teiri       rento       sinta     i     nempe
holy one   who-gen   reach-3pl me-all. the  songs

"Holy one whose songs reach me."

B) The second kind of genitive relative clause is if the possessed object is not
the subject. In this case, the pronoun is uninflected (and always inanimate)
and a resumptive possessive enclitic is found in the subordinate clause:

tilisi   i    nan          ta      yova ayaneisi nermannanya
I-see the man-acc  which rel.   I-went     house-all.-his
"I see the man whose house I went to"

-Elliott


----- Original Message ----
From: Daniel Bowman <danny.c.bowman@...>
To: CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu
Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2008 8:39:03 AM
Subject: Creative ways to form relative clauses?

Hello fellow conlangers,

I've been a lurker on the forums for some time, but I thought I'd break my
silence with a question that's been vexing me for some time:  How should my
conlang form relative clauses?

Currently, my conlang follows the English model, and thus the relative
clause structure of the sentence  "I hate the man who hit me yesterday"
would be quite similar in my conlang.  I'd rather do it some other way since
the rest of my grammar is decidedly non-English.

How do your conlangs handle this type of construction?  Any creative (read:
non English and romance language) ways to handle this?

And lastly, some background on my conlang.  It's called Angosey and I've
been working on it for about 10 years now.  It's not meant to be
particularly naturalistic.  It has a Verb-Subject-Object order but with
postpositions where English would have prepositions.  Word order is very
important.

Thanks a lot!