Verb + -n Derived Nouns

c. aba [ firo-tho › ] kabadaro ... one [ be.big-WH.SUBJ › ] jaguar ‘a big jaguar or, a jaguar which is big’ The relative clauses formed by the addition of these suffixes -thi and -tho sometimes oc- cur as free relative clauses. 25 When a free relative clause consists of a single word, it takes on the character of a noun, where the noun expresses the subject not necessarily the agent of the verb. 31 malhitan ‘to create’ malhita-thi ‘creator’ kakyn ‘to live’ kaky-tho ‘woman’ dian ‘to speak’ dia-thi ‘speaker’ ajomyn ‘to be high’ ajomyn-thi ‘God’ hehen ‘to be yellow’ hehe-thi ‘yellow one’ There seems to be an on-going process in the language whereby short, free relative clauses such as the above become conventionalized and, apparently, are added to the lexi- con as nouns. When this happens, it becomes possible to pluralize the resulting noun with the noun pluralizing suffixes already mentioned. 32 bian kaky-tho-be two live-WH.SUBJ-PL ‘two women’ An extreme example of this process may be many of the Arawak kinship terms. Most of the [–male] Arawak kinship terms end with -tho and most of the [+male] ones end with -thi , yet no speaker today is able to give meanings for the root forms. The following is but a small sample: 26 33 da-thi ‘my father’ d-aithi ‘my son’ da- erethi ‘my husband’ da- eretho ‘my wife’ d-okithi ‘my=elder bro younger brother’ d-okitho ‘my=elder sis younger sister’ da-bokithi ‘my=younger bro older brother’ In addition to the subject-relativizing suffixes -thi and -tho, Arawak also has a suffix which indicates a relativized direct object: -sia ‘WH.OBJ’. Since relativizing the object still leaves the subject of a clause in place, the -sia suffix does not occur in single-word free rel- ative clauses. Nevertheless, it does enter into the derivation of some nouns: 34 khin ‘to eat’ khesia ‘food’ y thyn ‘to drink’ ythysia ‘beverage’ In spite of the fact that many nouns are transparently combinations of verbs with one of the above relativization suffixes, these suffixes are relativizers and not nominalizers. They 2.3 Nominals 23 25 See Section 4.2 for a the discussion of free relative clauses. 26 See also Hickerson 1953, van Renselaar and Voorhoeve 1962, and de Goeje 1928.