Re: ? how would you classify this language ?

David Peterson and others have written:

gwalla@DESPAMMED.COM wrote:

<<AIUI, that's SVO in both clauses. The relative pronoun is considered
part of the main clause, while the relative clause has a "gap": in
English, the argument that corresponds to the relative pronoun is left out.

full sentence: That is what (I want).

main clause: That is what
S V O

relative clause: I want [...]
S V (O)>>

>No.   The whole reason that they proposed gaps and movement was that
their syntax didn't match up with the extent word order.   So when they
talk about "word order", they mean surface word order--otherwise all
languages would have the same word order (at least, according to some
linguists). >

Don't they???? (Signed, Noam)   :-)))))))

>  And technically, there's another gap in this sentence--the WH-
word has to move "covertly" to be in proper position.   (Or is that the
empty operator...?   Geez, I've forgotten my old school syntax already...)>

I guess there's at least a couple way to analyze it, as it stands.
1.  This  is [what I want]
     NP   COP  S[> NP+[V+O] (with some kind of fronting transformation-- I
don't think we want to call it the Q-trans.)

2. This is what [I want *what*]
   NP COP NP+S[> NP V (+deleted O)] which makes in comparable to a relative
clause with deleted relative pron. e.g. 'That's the man I saw'

But 3:  "what" is actually a substitute for _that which_  (which it is), so
that in fact the underlying structure is most similar to #2 above.

Both in Kash and Gwr, I tried to avoid using any form of the interrog.
pronoun in this construction-- though Kash ended up with an apparent variant
(kar, cf. kari 'who', kandri 'what')-- but Gwr worked better -- the form is
_lay_, a reduction of la-de 'things', cf.:

ko sÿq gr ja (ko)?
Q  we  do what (Q)?
'What shall/did we do?'.....vs.

mo naw chÿng lay mo gr tri
I  not know  THINGS I  do then
'I don't know what I did then/next.'

I hope this is reasonably clear; it's always risky to write posts at
cocktail time..........

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