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We present an analysis of the general noun-modifying clause construction in Wiru (Trans-New Guinea). In this construction, a subordinate clause modifies a head noun, whether or not the head noun plays a syntactic role in the subordinate clause. We present several structural features that are of typological interest. Subordinate clauses inflect for a restricted set of tense-aspect-mood categories: they neutralize the distinction between future and optative, and they exhibit a strong preference for anterior aspect. They can contain resumptive pronouns as well as full nouns that are coreferential with the head noun. Moreover, the head noun itself can be omitted, although other noun phrase constituents (such as adjectives or determiners) may still be present. This construction also exhibits special tonal properties, in that the lexical tone of the head noun is overridden and replaced with an HL falling contour. Finally, verb agreement with subjects that contain subordinate clauses is semantically governed, not structurally. We conclude with some areal comparisons.
Keywords: Trans-New Guinea Languages; Wiru; Noun-modifying Clause Constructions; Papuan Languages; Relative Clauses; Subordination
1. INTRODUCTION.1 In this paper, we discuss a subordination construction in Wiru, a language from the highlands of Papua New Guinea. In this construction a subordinate clause modifies a head noun attributively, but we argue that the construction should not be considered a relative clause but rather a general noun-modifying clause construction (GNMCC) (Matsumoto et al. 2017). GNMCCs allow for a greater range of semantic relationships between the modifying clause and the head noun than relative clauses do. We present evidence for the GNMCC analysis and then describe the properties of Wiru GNMCCs. The discussion highlights several features of the construction that are of typological interest, including agreement behavior in which semantic considerations override structural ones, tonal behavior that is associated exclusively with the GNMCC construction, and the permissibility of GNMCCs without an overt nominal head.
We present the necessary background on GNMCCs in the following subsection and introduce Wiru after that. In section 2, we describe the semantic properties of the GNMCC construction, detailing the kinds of relationships that can exist between the subordinate clause and its head. We then present various formal properties of the construction: section 3 on the structural properties of the subordinate clause, section 4 on the...