Complementizer -ri Complement clauses

mit-ts ʏk-ken bet. TE33 NEG-cause-NMLZ;CONJ AUX ‘In these days police and the pradhan and all people do not allow them to exploit.’ This sentence is elliptic, the indirect object comes in the next clause.

18.11.2 Complementizer -ri

I have treated the reciprocal pronouns in section 3.5.5. In this section I treat the reciprocal activity or action of two or more parties upon each other. This combines with the whole range of agentive verbs such as ‘to converse, to chat, to beat, to fight’, etc. The activity or movement happens back and forth between the participants. If there are two participants they are “reciprocally co-referent. They act upon or relate to each other” Givón 2001:96. • The complement-clause verb is nominalized with the reciprocal activity marker -ri which is attached to the nonpast root of the verb. The morpheme gloss RECP is used for this nominalizer. • The main verb is tsi with the finite clause affixation. This verb has elsewhere different lexical content, namely ‘heed, obey’. Here it is lexically almost empty and the meaning of the main clause comes from the complement-clause verb. • Only agentive verbs qualify to be complement-clause verbs. • Subjects are reciprocally co-referential. When the first is subject, the other is object, and vice versa. • The rest of the complement clause is the object of the matrix clause. • The main verb has all the inflections of an agentive verb, e.g. 1PST tsi-jen. However, the agent is not always marked for ergative as it should be with BT and T1 verbs. It is often in absolutive case. The reason might be that the activity is mutual and there are actually two or more agents acting on each other. Consider the following examples complement clauses are in square brackets. 18.196 roo- so ŋii-pu [ ta-ri ] tsi-kuk. 3SG-PL1 two-M1 look-RECP heed-PROG;VIS ‘They two are looking at each other.’ 18.197 roo-so [ ber-ri ] tsi-kuk. 3SG-PL1 beat-RECP heed-PROG;VIS ‘They are beating each other.’ There is no need to add a reciprocal pronoun because the reciprocal activity is coded in the complement clause. 18.198 roo-so sum [ ɕøt-ri ] tsi-kuk. 3SG-PL1 three speak-RECP heed-PROG;VIS ‘Those three men are talking back and forth.’ It may be just friendly talk with each other or it may include some arguing or debating. 18.199 roo-so [ d ʑuk-ri ] tsi-soŋ. 3SG-PL1 run-RECP heed-PST.VIS ‘They competed in running.’ Lit. ‘They ran a race with each other.’ 18.200 u-p-e roo- raŋ-so naŋ-tu u-ko su ba ak? that-HUM1-ERG 3SG-self-PL1 inside-LOC that-head who CFP INCLN sin-na t ɕik-taŋ tɕik-la [ tam ʈhi-ri ] tsi-ja bet. say-NFNT1 one-COM one-DAT talking enquire-RECP heed-NMLZ;Q AUX ‘They enquired from each other saying, “Who in the world is this?”’

18.11.3 Complementizer -lu