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Re: Creative ways to form relative clauses?

From:Carsten Becker <carbeck@...>
Date:Monday, December 22, 2008, 23:28
Hi Daniel,

Since everyone else who reads the list actively at the moment has
described how their conlang handles relative clauses, here is how my
conlang Ayeri does it:

The relative pronoun is 's-', which becomes just 'si' when the relative
clause is immediately following its head, or it gets inflected like
other nouns when the relation is made explicitly clear:

   Le kradyang ayon. Ang harisaya yas tamala.
   Le krad-yang ayon-Ø. Ang harisa-iya-Ø yas tamala.
   PATFOC hate-1s.AGT man.FOC || AGTFOC hit-3s.m.FOC 1s.PAT yesterday
   'I hate the man.' 'He hit me yesterday.'

   Le kradyang ayon si ang harisaya yas tamala.
   Le krad-yang ayon-Ø si-Ø ang harisa-iya-Ø yas tamala.
   PATFOC hate-1s.AGT man.FOC REL.Ø AGTFOC hit-3s.m.FOC 1s.PAT yesterday
   'I hate the man that he hit me yesterday.'

   ... sas ...
   ... s-as ...
   ... REL.PAT ...

However the relative pronoun can carry two case markers for extended
expressions like this:

   Le kredyang ayon sisā ang məsundalāy pangisley-ikan.
   Le kred-yang ayon-Ø si-Ø-(i)sā ang mə-sundala-ay pangis-ley=ikan.
   PATFOC hate-1s.AGT man.FOC REL.Ø-CAU AGTFOC PST-lose-1s.FOC
money.PAT-much
   'I hate the man due to whom I lost much money.'

   ... sassā ...
   ... s-as-(i)sā
   ... REL.PAT-CAU

No restriction is made according to which relation can be relativized,
though I might consider that for dialects, once I get to work out some
diachronics.

Regards
Carsten

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