K'tle – A Constructed Language

gqe/ Clauses

This chapter covers the different kinds of clauses.
  1. Primary Clauses
  2. Secondary Clauses
    1. Locational Uses of Location Words
  3. Attributive Clauses
    1. Participial Clauses
    2. Relative Clauses
    3. Indefinite Attributive Clauses
    4. Partitive Relative Clauses
  4. Nominal Clauses
    1. Quoted Speech and Direct Quotation
    2. Indirect Quotation

The grammatical words that are appropriate to this chapter are below (the equals sign indicates that the word is proclitic):

Tag Word Description
CPP me/ me̅ Coreferential Partitive Pronoun
Rel= o= o= Relative pronoun
IRP= i/= i̅= Indefinite Relative Pronoun/Particle

There are some affixes that are relevent here as well; for these, see Argument-2 Person Prefixes (specifically for the coreferential prefixes marked Cor-), Other Personal Affixes (specifically for those under Argument-3), Syntactical Category Suffixes, and Non-Primary Agreement Suffixes for the suffixes.

Primary Clauses

A clause represents a complete proposition of some sort. There are four kinds of clauses, based on syntactical function. A clause always contains one word functioning as its verb whose form depends on the syntactical function. Any clause may act as a matrix (i.e. providing specific kinds of context) to any clauses it contains.

A primary clause contains a primary (or finite) verb form and is the main clause of a sentence, or one of them, every complete sentence having at least one primary clause. A primary clause has no matrix and can't be contained by another clause, except as the main clause of a direct quotation.

Secondary Clauses

Most inflected words can have secondary forms. Secondary clauses include the following:

Adjunct clauses are simply clauses in which the adjunctive suffix |-£(i)| (-Con) is appended to a finite verb form.

Secondary predicates, unlike adjunct clauses, are coreferential. A resultative specifies the state of one of the matrix verb's arguments resulting from the action denoted by the matrix verb and is indicated using the resultative suffix |-pa| (-Rsl). A depictive, on the other hand, specifies the state of one of the matrix verb's arguments during the denoted situation.

Resultatives are used most often with dynamic transitive matrix verbs and sometimes with dynamic agentive matrix verbs. They are rarely used with other kinds of matrix verbs.

There are two kinds of depictives: those coreferencing the agent of the matrix and those coreferencing the patient. Note that agent and patient refer to the arguments by semantic role, not by position. Depictives coreferencing agents are marked as such using the agent-coreferencing depictive suffix |-m(e)| (-ACD) and those coreferencing patients using the patient-coreferencing depictive suffix (-PCD). -ACD forms can't be used with patientive matrix verbs and -PCD forms can't be used with agentive matrix verbs.

Some verbs can be used to specify the manner in which something is done, taking the manner adverb suffix (-Adv) in this case.

Degree adverbs and temporal adverbs constitute special cases.

Locational Uses of Location Words

A depictive suffix on a word denoting a location or locational relation acts like a locative case marker (but isn't one, due to all the other uses). When the matrix situation is dynamic, the resultative suffix on such a word acts like an allative case marker (that is, the resultative specifies where the matrix patient ends up as a result of the action).

Another theoretical case is the ablative, specifying the original location of the matrix patient. There are no specific affixes for this; if the location word is a relational verb, there's usually another word with opposite meaning which is used with the resultative suffix for that purpose. But if the word is patientive (as are the demonstratives), the only possibility is to use the resultative suffix on the negative form, the suffixes combined as |C-ampa|.

Attributive Clauses

An attributive clause is a clause that qualifies some noun, which plays a role within the attributive clause as well as in the matrix clause. That noun is called the head of the attributive clause and in some cases is not present, but merely implied. There are two kinds: participial clauses and relative clauses. Note that in either case, there will be a word which agrees with the head in gender and number.

Participial Clauses

If the role of the head within the clause is either the agent or the patient of the verb, a relative clause is never used and the verb takes an attributive form (called a participle) agreeing with the head in gender and number.

If the role of the head within the clause is the theme of a trivalent verb and one of the animate arguments of that verb is unspecified, the verb takes the thematic participle form, which is inanimate and agrees with the head in number. Note that the role of the remaining animate argument is determined by whether the verb is marked as direct, inverse, or reciprocal.

Relative Clauses

A relative clause always begins with a relative pronoun |o=| (Rel=), which agrees with the head in gender and number. The verb of the relative clause will always have a primary (finite) form. The role of the head within the clause is indicated by the coreferential person prefix (Cor-) which may be used as the possessor of a noun with obligatory possession, as the prefix argument of a word qualifying a noun, as the prefix argument of a secondary form, or as the prefix argument of a nominalized verb. The word bearing the coreferential prefix always appears immediately after the relative pronoun, except when contrastively focused (in which case, it appears at the end of the relative clause).

As shown in the affix section, the coreferential prefix has direct, inverse, and reciprocal forms, each with imperative and non-imperative versions. Also, if the coreferential argument is the theme of a trivalent verb (for example, on an infinitive), prefixes identical to the non-coreferential thematic prefixes (3S- and 3P-) are used; unlike the others the thematic prefixes agree in number with the head.

Possibly, this might also be:

Indefinite Attributive Clauses

These are typically translated with words such as "whoever" and "whatever". There are two kinds: indefinite participial clauses and indefinite relative clauses. They both involve |i̅=| (IRP=) and take indefinite agreement.

In indefinite participial clauses, |i̅=| acts as a proclitic particle, coming at the start of the clause (usually followed immediately by the participle).

In indefinite relative clauses, |i̅=| replaces the relative pronoun |o=| (Rel=) and takes the same participial agreement.

Partitive Relative Clauses

A partitive relative clause is typically translated using phrases such as "of which some are" or "of which one is".

These make use of the coreferential partitive pronoun |me̅| (CPP), which agrees with the head in gender, but agrees in number according to its use within the relative clause (see also Partitives ).

The CPP is placed immediately after the relative pronoun, and if both are plural, the relative pronoun drops its own agreement suffix and is attached to the CPP, i.e. |ome̅ka| and |ome̅na|.

The simplest kind of partitive relative clause is one for which the non-partitive version is participial; others correspond to non-partitive relative clauses. In both kinds, the argument of which the CPP is an elaboration takes indefinite agreement.

Nominal Clauses

A nominal clause is a clause which is used as the elaboration of an argument. There are three kinds: nominalized finite clauses, infinitive clauses, and direct quotations. The first are simply clauses in which the nominalizer |-z(o)| (-Nom) is suffixed to a finite verb, while the second make use of coreferential verb forms called infinitives, which replace the Argument-1 suffix (Argument-2 if agentive) with the infinitive suffix |-mez| (-Inf). The third are covered below.

The argument coreferenced by an infinitive is specifically the agent of the matrix clause. In contrast, a 3rd person argument (i.e. 3S or 3P) of a nominalized verb form can't refer to that agent. If the coreferenced argument is local (i.e. 1st or 2nd person) either an infinitive can be used, or a nominalized form repeating the local argument. Note that an infinitive clause must be complementary; for gnomic uses, a nominalized indefinite form must be used.

The matrix verb argument of which the noun clause is an elaboration is usually indefinite, but can be definite in certain cases.

Quoted Speech and Direct Quotation

Both direct speech, where the original utterance is quoted without change, and indirect speech, where the quotation may be modified to fit the context of quotation, are possible. In both cases, the matrix verb denotes an act of communication, and for which the quotation is the theme.

In writing direct speech, the quotation is enclosed within double angle brackets « and », with corresponding pauses when spoken.

Indirect Quotation

In indirect speech, the personal agreement of the quotation must be changed unless the agent of the matrix verb is 1st person and the patient of the matrix verb is 2nd person. If either the agent or the patient of the matrix verb is 3rd person and is coreferenced by the quoted verb, an infinitive must be used instead of a nominalized finite verb in the quotation. The coreferential prefix (Cor-) is used on the infinitive if two animate 3rd person arguments are coreferenced.

I need to figure out for which case the inverse prefix is used.

The examples below all use indirect quotations of the following utterance:

Note that nominalized imperative verbs can occur in indirect speech and that there are imperative infinitives.

page started: 2009.Mar.12 Thu
prior version: 2009.Apr.10 Fri
last modified: 2009.Oct.20 Tue
content and form originated by qiihoskeh

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