Chapter 7
The general noun-modifying clause construction in Tundra Nenets and its possible origin
Irina Nikolaeva | School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Tundra Nenets (Uralic) exhibits unambiguous relative clauses and sentential complements of nouns, but I show that it also has a previously unstudied but structurally distinct GNMCC. The GNMCC covers a diversity of functions although its usage is restricted in various ways. The paper suggests that it has a direct parallel in the non-sentential domain in terms of its syntactic behaviour, the morphosyntactic expression of the constructional ingredients and the basic semantics: it is modelled after the non-clausal compound-like structure employed for the very general purpose of modifying one noun by reference to another noun. Such modification-by-noun constructions served as a historical source of Tundra Nenets GNMCCs, which emerged when the modifying deverbal noun was reanalysed as heading a clausal domain.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The basic properties of the language
- 3.Relative clauses
- 4.Noun complementation
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5.General noun-modifying clause constructions
- 5.1Relativization-like function
- 5.2Extended functions
- 6.GNMCCs and noun-noun compounds
- 7.Remarks about diachrony
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Abbreviations
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References
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