Clauses as Noun Modifiers in Toba (Guaycuruan) (en arbitraje)

A typological overview to relative clauses in languages of the Americas

John Benjamins Publishing Company

Lugar: Amsterdam/Philadelphia; Año: 2010;

This paper aims to identify, describe and explain the different coding devices of noun modifying clauses in Toba. In this language, the subordinators are related to the demonstrative class and to a component morpheme of the third person free pronouns, so the synchronic polyfunctionality of these morphemes is shown.             In the complex clauses domain, the use of the different morphemes solely as relativizers or as complementizers as well is studied. Relative clauses and noun complements are differentiated by the co-reference or not between the head noun and one of the participants in the modifying clause. Besides, it is demonstrated that pragmatic factors rather than the syntactic function of the modified head noun within the dependent clause explains the use of the different subordinators.