Last time, I mentioned that Okinawan behaves very differently than Japanese in terms of how it morphologically marks relative clauses. In Japanese, the verbal form which modifies the head of the relative clause is marked the same as a verb which is the head of a matrix clause—that is, it takes tense-aspect-mood marking, but nothing else special. For instance:
(1) kak-u hon
write-IPFV book
‘the book that (somebody) writes’
(2) hon-o kak-u
book-ACC write-IPFV
‘(Somebody) writes a book.’
In both cases, we see the verb kak- ‘to write’ appearing with the same ending, the imperfective aspect marker -u.
The situation is markedly different in Okinawan:
(3) kach-uru sumuchi
write-ATTR book
‘the book that (somebody) writes’
(4) sumuchi kach-u-n
book write-IPFV-FIN
‘(Somebody) writes a book.’
Here, the verb kak- ‘to write’ has a very different form in the one construction versus the other. In the relative clause in (3), it takes what has been traditionally called the attributive form (or rentaikei 連体形). The attributive form is distinct from the final form (or shūshikei 終止形), as seen in (4), and the key difference between the two is that the attributive form almost exclusively appears on the final verb of a relative clause, while the final form appears exclusively on the final verb of a matrix clause.
I say “almost exclusively” for the attributive form, because there are some interesting cases of insubordination—that is, a seemingly non-finite clause used as a finite clause (see Evans 2007) in which it can occur. These are again kakari musubi (係り結び) phenomenon that we touched on last time, but with a different focus particle triggering them, and a different TAM marker resulting from the presence of said focus particle.
The focus particle du, which emphasizes the word or phrase it is attached to triggers the attributive form of the verb even in cases where we would expect the final form of the verb. Compare, for instance, (4) above with (5):
(5) sumuchi du kach-uru
book EF write-ATTR
‘(Somebody) writes a book.1‘
These sorts of phenomenon are interesting, and illustrate a little of my hesitation and struggle with finding a good label for the attributive and the final. We are not only dealing with the status of a verb in terms of being attributive—that is, modifying things in the same way as a relative clause—versus final—that is, signaling the end a matrix clause, we are also dealing with issues of focus and epistemic modality.
Another interesting issue here arises when we compare the attributive forms of different verbs in Okinawan with their counterparts in Old Japanese:
[table class=”table table-striped”]
Okinawan, Old Japanese, gloss
tach-uru, tat-u, ‘to rise’
wata-y-uru, watar-u, ‘to cross’
chu-uru, k-uru (elision of *kö-uru), ‘to come’
chi-y-uru, kî-ru, ‘to wear’
[/table]
Okinawan universally uses -uru to mark attributive forms, while Old Japanese has -u after consonant stem and r-irregular verbs, -ru after strong vowel stem verbs, -uru after other vowel stem verbs, and -ö after the copula n-. What exactly went on historically in Okinawan is not clear. Analogical leveling seems tempting at first glance, but we end up in these forms and in others with unexplained “residue”. Why, for instance, do we have palatalization of the second /t/ in ‘to rise’? Why are there seeming empty morphemes, |-y-|, with r-consonant stem and vowel stem verbs?
I’ll address this in a future post, as we’re getting pretty far from relative clauses.
1. This sort of focus would be indicated by intonation in English, represented here by the italics.
References:
Evans, Nicholas. 2007. “Insubordination and its uses.” In: Irina Nikolaeva (ed.). Finiteness: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.