Re: Creative ways to form relative clauses?

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

--
Ang ming sungva baloybenungley nā ya:
http://benung.nfshost.com/