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often deleted optionally. Given the sentence
(278)
/píyawè1 h2 óliyà3/
bird-Nom I-Inst shoot-RemP
             [A]
`I1 shot3 the bird2
the favourite form is
(279)
/píyawè1 óliyà2/
bird-Nom shoot-RemP
`(I) shoot2 the bird1
In texts, when there is a sequence of sentences in the form of a topic chain, the nominative NP is said only with the first and is deleted in the subsequent sentences.
(280)
/jyimcyane1 á2 hanáliyà3/ and
Jimchane-Nom house come-Dat
 
/ tape4 tháyàgõ5 höbá6
food-Acc eat-Imp1 forest-Dat
 
bóliyà7/
go-RemP
 
`Jimchane1 came3 home2. Having
eaten5 food4, (he)0 went7 to forest6
 
It contrast, many verbless sentences are also available with just an accusative NP, a dative NP, or an adverbial.
 
(281)
/h/ `I (he gave it to me)’
(282)
/iskul/ `to school (I am going to . . . )’
 
Though the occurrence is agreed upon, the general acceptability is less since the informants insist on the necessity of the presence of the verb. We can distinguish these from the other minimal sentences by saying that the latter involve discourse ellipsis, whereas the former involve grammatical ellipsis.
 
3.7. Relativization
If the nominative NP of any sentence has the same referent as any NP of a second sentence, then the first sentence can be embeded as a relative clause on to the NP of the second sentence. The preferred position for a relative clause is immediately preceding the NP it qualifies. The relative clause is frequently marked by its verb taking the case inflexion of the NP it qualifies, when the NP precedes the clause. Mishmi does not use any overt relativizers. The position of the clause and some NP movements represent the embedding. Two types of relativization are noticed.
 
(i)NP ----> NP + S
(ii)NP ----> S
 
If the sentences form a topic chain, the lower NP is obligatorily deleted. But in a situation of identical to the NP on to which the relativization is applied, it is deleted obligatorily.
 

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