214 Chapter 7 Nominals and noun phrases
ogy. Largely, these are clauses without overt subjects, as in (154) and (155).
(154) Maca buku-na ba'na se e-lako-ne Hosen.
AV.read book-DEF you REL OV-work-E Hosen
‘Reading your book is what Hosen is doing.’
(155) Ngeco' motor jareya juba'.
AV.steal car this evil
‘Stealing a car is bad.’
12. Constituent order in NPs
While is it unusual in natural speech for an NP to include more than two or
three elements aside from the head N, it is grammatically possible for many
more to occur. Modifiers of the N occur in fairly regular positions, and the ex-
amples in previous sections illustrated the canonical position for these. However
data in previous sections show that quantifiers and numbers can occur either
before or after the head N. The canonical order of each modifier with respect to
the head N is as in the following schema.
(156) Canonical order of head N and modifier
N - demonstrative
N - possessor (except for first person pronominal tang/sang - N)
N - attributive adjective
N - prepositional phrase
N - relative clause
Quant - N, N - Quant
Num - N, N -Num
When there is more than one modifier, there are frequently options re-
garding their ordering. For example, an adjective most naturally follows a pos-
sessor but occurs as the predicate in a relative clause rather than as a bare attri-
butive adjective.
(157) Koceng-nga Nabun se koros ngeco' juko'.
cat-DEF Nabun REL thin AV.steal fish
‘Nabun’s skinny cat stole the fish.’
(158) Engko’ melle bengko-na Hasan se laju.
I AV.buy house-DEF Hasan REL old
‘I bought Hasan’s old house.’