Verbal clauses 157
4. Verbal clauses
As is to be expected, many declarative sentences have clauses in which the pre-
dicate is a verbal element. What follows illustrates the various types. (Various
aspects of verbal clauses, e.g. voice morphology and aspect, are treated in more
detail in Chapter 9.)
4.1 Intransitive clauses
Clauses with stative intransitive (adjectival) verbs predicate some property of
their sole argument. The standard word order for these clauses is subject - verb.
(45) Kana' koros juwa penter.
child thin that smart
‘That skinny kid is smart.’
(46) Kopi reya manes.
coffee this sweet
‘This coffee is sweet.’
(47) Hadi lo' tenggi.
Hadi not tall
‘Hadi is not tall.’
(48) Kamar-ra berse.
room-DEF clean
‘The room is clean.’
Adjectival predicates take no voice marking, but occur in their root form, as in
(45-48). This large class of predicates includes the following, among many oth-
ers: cellep ‘cold’, kene' ‘small’, kennyang ‘full’, koros ‘thin’, lapar ‘hungry’,
nyaman ‘nice/delicious’, panas ‘hot’, raddin ‘beautiful’, raja ‘large’, and rosak
‘broken’.
Dynamic intransitive verbs consist of two classes, (1) verbs that describe
actions that need not be under the control of the sole argument and (2) verbs
that necessarily are under the volitional control of their argument. Both types
denote a change of state or location of the subject. Examples of noncontrolled
dynamic intransitives are given in (49-52).
(49) Prao-na Pa' Tono kerem.
ship-DEF Mr Tono sank
‘Pak Tono’s ship sank.’