366 Chapter 11 Complex sentences
(131) koceng se ngeco' juko'
cat REL AV.steal fish
‘the cat that stole the fish’
(132) buku se e-baca red-mored
book REL OV-read RED-student
‘the book the students read’
In (131) and (132), the subject has been relativized, there being a gap in the
subject position of ngeco' juko' ‘stole the fish’ in (131) and ebaca red-mored
‘read by the students’ in (132).
In the standard cases, only subjects and possessors of subjects may be
relativized. Relative clauses of possessors of subjects are illustrated in (133) and
(134).
(133) mored se buku-na e-buwang bi' Ali
student REL book-DEF OV-discard by Ali
‘the student whose book Ali threw away’
(134) oreng lake' se ana'-eng la mangkat dha' Amerika
person male REL child-DEF already leave to America
‘the man whose child has already left for America’
As clearly indicated in the translations, in (133) mored ‘student’ is the owner of
the book and in (134) oreng lake' ‘man’ is the father of the subject ana'eng ‘his
child’. In (132), in which the theme of the transitive verb baca ‘read’ is relati-
vized, the verb occurs in the object voice. This choice of voice is obligatory. As
(135) illustrates, the theme cannot be directly relativized from object position.
(135) *buku se red-mored maca
book REL RED-student AV.read
(the book the students read)
Also, the actor voice counterpart of (135), in which the possessor of the direct
object is directly relativized, is ungrammatical.
(136) *mored se Ali muwang buku-na
student REL Ali AV.discard book-DEF
(the student whose book Ali threw away)
These data demonstrate that relativization is a syntactic determinant of
voice selection. If the actor of a transitive verb (or its possessor) is to be relati-