66 Chapter 3 Lexical categories
b. Aba'na se sala.
he/she REL wrong
‘He/she is who is wrong.’
(14) a. Oreng rowa guru.
person that teacher
‘That person is a teacher.’
b. *Oreng rowa se guru.
(15) a. Aba'na kapala.
he/she head
‘He/She is the head.’
b. *Aba'na se kapala.
In (10a), the predicate of the simple sentence oreng rowa entar ‘that person
went’ is entar ‘go’. In (10b), entar occurs in the cleft construction. In (12a,)
penter ‘smart’ is the predicate of the simple sentence oreng rowa penter ‘that
person is smart’, and in (12b) occurs in the cleft construction. In (14a), guru
‘teacher’ is the predicate in the simple sentence oreng rowa guru ‘that person is
a teacher’, showing that the noun can serve as the predicate of the clause. The
structures of the simple sentences in (10a), (12a), and (14a) appear to be compa-
rable, so one might expect that it should be possible for guru to occur in the
same position in a cleft. However, (14b) is ungrammatical, and is ungrammati-
cal precisely because guru cannot occur here in the cleft. In order for a noun
root to occur in this position in a cleft, the predicate daddi ‘become’ must be
used, as in (16) and (17).^4 See Chapter 11 section 7 for discussion of the struc-
ture of relative clauses and cleft constructions.
(^4) It is possible to include the verb daddi as a verb in the grammatical sentences in (14a)
and (15a). However, doing so changes the meaning of the sentences. For instance,
while (14a) Oreng rowa guru identifies that man as being a teacher, Oreng rowa daddi
guru does not identify the man as a teacher but that he became or is becoming a teacher.
In the relative clauses in (16) and (17), daddi is simply being used as a semantically
bleached existential predicate. This use occurs in other environments as well, as in the
following sentence, taken from a narrative:
(i) Sampe' sateya kenneng-nga tana se e-kala' jiya paggun daddi blumbang.
until now place-DEF soil REL OV-take this still become pond
‘Now the place where the soil was taken is still a pond.’