Re: Terkunan revision (adding a lot of Rhodrese)

Hi!

Douglas Koller writes:
>...  At the relative pronoun level, for me, a ki/ke divide falls
> along nom/acc lines (French qui/que; Italian chi/che). At the
> relative pronoun level, your "ke" looks akin to Spanish which works
> for both (though in an Isabel Allende novel, I saw "quien" for "who"
> in a relative clause). At the interrogative pronoun level, ki/ke gets
> you a "who" vs. "what" distinction, with maybe a nom/acc overlay (qui
> est-ce qui, qui est-ce que, qu'est-ce qui, qu'est-ce que).
> That you can conflate all that into "ke" (plus "that" as a
> subordinating conjunction) workably is admirable. "Ke" may be quite
> the workhorse in this lang.
Admirable?  Hmm, you think it does not work?  It is even used as an
interrogative determiner -- there is no 'kel' or something like that,
so _ke kan?_ is 'which dog?'.

So far, I had no problems understanding the sentences I wrote.  But
then, *I* wrote those sentences...

There are indeed some ambiguities because of this, but not too many, I
think.  Terkunan is (currently) not pro-drop, so this rules out some
ambiguities, and it also requires an explicit referent in the matrix
clause of a relative clause.  So let's check a transitive verb in a
subordinate clause:

   Mi vis' ke manga.              --  I see who eats.
                                     *I see what you/he/she/... eats.

   Mi visa le ke manga.           --  I see the one who eats.

   Mi vis' ke tu manga.           --  I see that you eat.
                                     *I see what you eat.

   Mi visa le ke tu manga.        --  I see what you eat.

   Mi vis' ke fimbre manga.       --  I see that the woman eats.
                                      I see which woman eats.
                                     *I see what the woman eats.
To clarify:

   Mi vis' ke le fimbre manga.    --  I see that the woman eats.
                                     *I see which woman eats.

   Mi vis' ke fimbre es ke manga. -- *I see that the woman eats.
                                      I see which woman eats.

   ...

Of course, I might have overlooked something somewhere else.
Suggestions?

**Henrik