Pre-Head Relative Clauses Noun Phrase Structure

b. to [hehe-tho] [firo-tho] ori the [yellow-WH.SUBJ] [big-WH.SUBJ] snake ‘the yellow big snake’ There is a limit on the complexity of the relative clauses that may appear before the head of a noun phrase. The only constituents in these relative clauses that seem to be allowed, other than the verb with appropriate relativizing morphology, are morphologically bound subject prefixes and pre-verbal adverbial particles of extent, intensification, and negation. If any additional constituents such as objects or locatives are added to such a clause, it ap- pears to become too “heavy” and is placed after the head. 125 to [da-dibaleda-sia] khota-ha the [I-roast-WH.OBJ] meat-NGEN ‘the meat I roasted’ 126 a. to [da-dibaleda-sia ikhihi diako] khota-ha the [I-roast-WH.OBJ fire on] meat-NGEN ‘the meat I roasted over fire’ b. to khota-ha [da-dibaleda-sia ikhihi diako] the meat-NGEN [I-roast-WH.OBJ fire on] ‘the meat I roasted over fire’ 127 a. to [Ka-balha dibaleda-sia] khota-ha the [ATTR-hair roast-WH.OBJ] meat-NGEN ‘the meat Hairy roasted’ 4 b. to khotaha [Ka-balha dibaleda-sia] the meat-NGEN [ATTR-hair roast-WH.OBJ] ‘the meat Hairy roasted’ 128 a. li [dibaleda-thi to khota-ha] wadili the [roast-WH.SUBJ the meat-NGEN] man ‘the man who roasted the meat’ b. li wadili [dibaleda-thi to khoda-ha] the man [roast-WH.SUBJ the meat-NGEN] ‘the man who roasted the meat’ The question of what makes a relative clause “heavy” in Arawak remains open at the mo- ment. It is interesting to note, however, that English has similar phenomena. For example, although it is acceptable to have more than a bare participial before the head of a noun phrase, 129 the seldom spoken word his very frequently broken nose 3.1 Noun Phrase Structure 55 4 Kabalha is a nickname. Arawaks normally refer to each other using kinship terms or nicknames, and the use of a person’s given name is traditionally avoided. See de Goeje 1928 regarding an explanation based on former shamanistic practices. adding an agent phrase is unacceptable: 130 the by the man spoken word the spoken by the man word his broken by me nose The unacceptability of the first of the bad phrases could be due to the fact that in English sen- tences, an agent phrase follows the passive verb. This seems to be true also in participial clauses, as in 131. 131 the word spoken by the man English also seems to have a requirement that the head of a participial relative con- struction must be adjacent to the head of the relative construction itself i.e. in final position in the relative clause. This explains the unacceptability of the second and third bad phrases given above. Since the requirement for the position of the agent phrase conflicts with the requirement that the head of the participial construction must be adjacent to the head of the NP, the participial modifier can only follow the head in such cases. Similar principles may be operating in Arawak. For example, an adjacency principle like the one mentioned for English would explain the unacceptability of pre-head relative clauses with explicit objects or postpositional phrases between the verb of the relative clause and the head of the entire relative clause examples repeated from above. 132 a. to [da-dibaleda-sia ikhihi diako] khota-ha the [I-roast-WH.OBJ fire on] meat-NGEN ‘the meat I roasted over fire’ b. li [dibaleda-thi to khota-ha] wadili the [roast-WH.SUBJ the meat-NGEN] man ‘the man who roasted the meat’ The unacceptability of full nominal subjects in pre-head relative clauses with relativized objects is not as easy to explain since both morphologically bound and morphologically free pronouns in the same position are acceptable. Presumably at least the morphologically free pronouns are under the subject NP node just like full nominal subjects. 133 a. to [Ka-balha dibaleda-sia] khota-ha the [ATTR-hair roast-WH.OBJ] meat-NGEN ‘the meat Hairy roasted’ b. to [ly-dibaleda-sia] khota-ha the [he-roast-WH.OBJ] meat-NGEN ‘the meat he roasted’ c. to [li dibaleda-sia] khota-ha the [he roast-WH.OBJ] meat-NGEN ‘the meat he roasted’ 56 Noun Phrase and Sentence Syntax Whatever the syntactic explanation for this is, 5 perceptually, the ungrammatical example above is the start of a “garden path” sentence. The hearer assumes the article to is the de- terminer of an NP with Ka-balha ‘Hairy’ as head and that this noun phrase is the subject of an independent clause. The hearer then proceeds to ignore the relativizing suffix and as- sumes khotaha ‘meat’ is inside the VP of this clause. When the hearer then attempts to pro- cess anything following the relative clause, this following material then sounds to him like a run-on sentence. A possessor NP and a relative clause cannot co-occur before the head of a noun phrase in such a way that both modify that head. If both do occur in this position, the construction is interpreted to mean that the relative clause modifies the possessor NP, not the head of the noun phrase or the combination of the head and possessor. 134 a. [bian [kabadaro [dike]]] [two [jaguar [footprint]]] ‘two jaguar footprints’ b. [[bian [firo-tho [kabadaro]]] [dike]] [[two [big-WH.SUBJ [jaguar]]] [footprint]] ‘footprints of two big jaguars’ ‘two big footprints of a jaguar’ ‘two footprints of a big jaguar’ In Arawak, to express concepts such as the two unacceptable translations above, one must use a post-head relative clause 6 with the stative verb nin. 7 135 a. bian firo-tho dike, kabadaro nin-tho two big-WH.SUBJ footprint jaguar belong-WH.SUBJ ‘two big footprints of a jaguar’ b. bian dike, aba firo-tho kabadaro nin-tho two footprint one big-WH.SUBJ jaguar belong-WH.SUBJ ‘two footprints of a big jaguar’

3.1.5 The Head of the Noun Phrase

As can be seen in many of the above examples, the head of the noun phrase may be sin- gular or plural, simple or derived. 8 3.1 Noun Phrase Structure 57 5 One possibility might be that a subject NP would have no source for case if pre-head relative clauses are non-finite. However, it is unclear how to prove they are non-finite, since it is possible for these clauses to receive tense marking and they do not receive the subordinating suffix -n. For example, to [ly-dibaleda-sia-bo] khota-ha the [he-roast-WH.OBJ-CONT] meat-NGEN ‘the meat he is roasting’ 555 6 See Section 3.1.6 on post-head relative clauses. 7 Nin is actually the generalized location postposition, but like other postpositions, it can be used as a two-argument stative verb. See Section 3.2.3. 8 The use of the plural suffix is optional for [–human] nouns. See Section 2.3.3.3 for a discussion on number in nouns. 136 a. aba kodibio one bird ‘a bird’ b. bian kodibio-be two bird-PL ‘two birds’ c. johon kalyn-tho falhetho-dalhidi-koana-be many fast-WH.SUBJ white.man-run-THING-PL ‘many fast cars’ If the head of the NP is a pronoun, no other constituents may precede it. For example, in the following noun phrases, the relative clause ‘who ran’ can precede the head of a noun phrase when that head is a noun. However, it must follow the head when the head is a pronoun. 137 a. li dalhidi-thi-fa wadili the run-WH.SUBJ-FUT man ‘the man who will run’ b. lirabo he.distant ‘he over there’ c. lirabo dalhidi-thi he.distant run-WH.SUBJ ‘the one over there who ran’ d. dalhidi-thi lirabo 9 run-WH.SUBJ he.distant ‘the one over there who ran’ If the head of a noun phrase is not a pronoun, it may be modified either by a possessor NP see Section 3.1.3 or by a morphologically bound possessive pronoun. Morphologically bound pronouns do not have the same co-occurrence restrictions that possessor NPs have. As has already been mentioned, possessor NPs cannot co-occur with pre-head relative clauses. This means that when a morphologically free pronoun functions as the head of a possessor NP, it cannot also co-occur with a pre-head relative clause. However, a morpho- logically bound possessive pronoun can. This contrast can be explained by assuming that morphologically bound pronouns are, in fact, part of the head noun of the matrix NP and do not function syntactically as possessor NPs. 10 They then fall outside of the co-occurrence restriction. For example, notice the use of ‘her’ in the following examples: 58 Noun Phrase and Sentence Syntax 9 Example 137d is ungrammatical only if it is taken as a single noun phrase. It is grammatical as an equative sentence meaning: ‘He over there is the one who is running.’ 10 This assumes a structure something like the following: N clitic N