subordinate claws

[Michael Mccafferty]

The other day, in the midst of discussion of "ineua" Dr. Karttunen wrote
me this off-list:


"It's not really clear whether Nahuatl even has (or had prior to exposure
to the model of Spanish) subordinate clauses as we know them.  I believe
it was Jane Rosenthal who wrote on the topic of "headless relative
clauses" in Nahuatl a long time ago, but Jim Lockhart and I were not
really sure that such constructions weren't just concatenated sentences
rather than a main clause and a subordinate clause."

In the message i'd sent to the list that prompted this response, I should
have spoken more clearly. What I meant to say is that I've been running
across in reading the Florentine *many* lines where "in" introduces a
statement that describes a preceding statement to the left of the "in,"
and that the translation into English of the statement following the "in"
is best accomplished by the use of a relative clause.  Inon ca mochi.

Best,
Michael