Toba Batak relative clauses #

Toba Batak has two postnominal relative-clause strategies and can relativize direct objects by neither. The relativizer na introduces a clause with the relativized position left empty, as in boru-boru na manussi abit i 'the woman who is washing clothes', and it relativizes subjects only; a direct object must first be passivized into a subject. Noun phrases governed by prepositions, indirect objects included, cannot be promoted, so a second strategy with the marker ima na retains a personal pronoun in the relativized position, as in dakdanak i, ima na nipaboa ni si Rotua turi-turian i tu ibana 'the child that Rotua told the story to'; it relativizes indirect objects, obliques and genitives. The gap at the direct object is the paper's reason for stating the Hierarchy Constraints per strategy. The data are [KC77]'s.