existential constructions: CORRECTED VERSION

[John Peterson]

VYAKARAN: South Asian Languages and Linguistics Net
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Corinna,

I'm not quite sure, but if this is the type of examples you're looking
for, then Kharia (South Munda) has both types of "relative clauses":

iny yo-y-oj       lebu-ki  iny-a? hoTel-te  aw-ta-ki.
1S  see-y-A.PT.1S person-P 1S-GEN hotel-OBL live-M.PRS-P
'The people I saw live in my hotel.'

("S" - singular, "A" -active voice, "PT" - past, "P" - plural", "GEN" -
genitive, "OBL" - oblique case, "M" - middle voice, "PRS" - present)

It is virtually always possible to use a finite predicate in Kharia in
attributive function (also with other syntactic functions, such as
adjuncts (instrumental, temporal, etc.)), but it is difficult to tell to
what extent it forms a syntactic unit with the rest of the complement of
the predicate (the "NP"), but that is something I'm currently trying to
find out.

I'm not sure about the existential construction, as I don't think I have
any examples for that in my corpus, but I'd be glad to check.

If you need more examples, please let me know and I'll be glad to send
them to you.

All the best,
John

--
John Peterson
FB 7, Sprachwissenschaft
Universität Osnabrück
D-49069 Osnabrück
Germany
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Homepage: http://www.SouthAsiaBibliography.de/