210 Chapter 7 Nominals and noun phrases
In (134), the intensive adjective ce' tenggina ‘very tall’ is part of a sequence of
adjectival modifiers.
10. Prepositional phrase modifiers
Prepositional phrase modifiers show some of the same properties as adjectival
modifiers. Like adjectival modifiers they follow the noun in the noun phrase
and can occur either as plain PP modifiers, as in (135a) and (136a), or as predi-
cates in relative clause modifiers, as in (127b) and (136b).
(135) a. Tang tamoy maca buku bab kopi.
my guest AV.read book about coffee
‘My guest read the book about coffee.’
b. Tang tamoy maca buku se bab kopi.
my guest AV.read book REL about coffee
‘My guest read the book about coffee.’
(136) a. Kana' dhari Kamal rowa mennang addu-wan.^5
child from Kamal that won compete-NOM
‘That guy from Kamal won the game.’
b. Kana' se dhari Kamal rowa mennang addu-wan.
child REL from Kamal that won compete-NOM
‘That guy from Kamal won the game.’
There is a strong preference for prepositional modifiers in relative clauses
where otherwise ambiguity would result. So, the potential ambiguity of e meja
‘at the table’ in (137), where the PP could modify either the predicate or the
noun buku is resolved by the use of the relative clause construction in (138).
The strongly preferred interpretation of (137) is that of predicate modifier, as
reflected in the translation.
(137) Bambang maca buku e meja.
Bambang AV.read book at table
‘Bambang read the book at the table.’ (indicating where Bambang read)
(^5) The form kana' ‘child’, which has the k extension added to the root ana' ‘child’, often
refers to a person not well-known to the speaker. In this use, illustrated in (136), it is
best rendered in English as ‘guy’ or ‘kid’.