448 Chapter 14 Questions
(37) Ale' e-kekke' embi'-na sapa?
yngr.sibling OV-bite goat-DEF who
‘Whose goat bit Little Brother?’
This restriction currently holds for formal Madurese and for many speakers in
general. However, just as the specificity requirement is relaxed for non-
interrogative subjects in colloquial Madurese (at least in some varieties), the
restriction is relaxed somewhat for questioned subjects, and questions such as
those in (38) do occur. I annotate them here as ‘%’ due to the fact that some
speakers reject them as ill-formed, despite the fact that the majority consider
them perfectly acceptable.
(38) a. %Sapa mokol Ali?
who AV.hit Ali
‘Who hit Ali?’
b. %Sapa ngerem sorat?
who AV.send letter
‘Who sent the letter?’
c. %Ana'-eng sapa e-kekke' burus-sa Hadi?
child-DEF who OV-bite dog-DEF Hadi
‘Whose child did Hadi’s dog bite?’
4.2 Clefted questions
The second major manner of questioning arguments is the cleft structure. In
clefted questions, the interrogative phrase normally occurs clause-initially fol-
lowed by a headless relative clause. Just as with non-interrogative clefts, the
headless RC is the subject of the sentence and the clefted phrase the predicate
(see Chapter 11 section 8 for a discussion and analysis of cleft constructions).
Consistent with the restriction on relative clauses, the clefted interrogative
phrase always corresponds to the subject or the possessor of the subject of the
relative clause. Clefted questions are illustrated in (39-42).
(39) Sapa se melle motor anyar?
who REL AV.buy car new
‘Who bought a new car?’
(more literally ‘Who is the one who bought a new car?’)