Subjective and Objective Relative Clauses in Warao

Abstract

Warao is a basically O-initial, solidly V-final language, which does not case-mark nominal constituents (Romero-Figueroa 1985a, 1985b)* As a result of such typological characteristics, this language offers complex syntactic constructions very difficult to process. However, Warao has developed mechanisms intended for alleviating the burden in message encoding and decoding tasks. Its relative clauses provide an example of sophisticated, yet clear-cut, disambiguating operations. They involve a network of morphophonological and syntactic clues that leads to unequivocal semantic interpretations, and that allows the speaker of the language to know which particular language item is taking part in relativization within any string of discourse. Part of this paper is devoted to the description and explanation of these phenomena. Further, the strategy of relativization used by the language, and the noun phrase accessibility to relative clause formation are discussed. Finally, a brief analysis of free relative nouns (or relative clause-based nominalizations), constructions that seem peculiar to this language, is presented.