Clauses as Noun Modifiers in Toba (Guaycuruan)

CARPIO, MARÍA BELÉN; CENSABELLA, MARISA

A typological overview to relative clauses in languages of the Americas

John Benjamins Publishing Company

Lugar: Amsterdam/Philadelphia; Año: 2012; p. 173 - 190

This paper aims to identify, describe and explain three different coding devices of noun modifying clauses in a corpus of narrative texts in Toba. Among noun modifying clauses we consider relative clauses and noun complements. We show that the syntactic function of the head noun within the relative clause does not condition the use of the different subordinators, rather it is inferred by subtraction of the missing argument in the relative clause. The pragmatic conditions on relative clauses, i.e. the type of information encoded in it, have proved to be relevant in the selection of the subordinators. The semantic condition on relative clauses, i.e. the co-reference between the head noun and the modifying clause, has been central to distinguish them from noun complements. We also describe the synchronic polyfunctionality of the subordinators