250 Fiona Me Laughlin3 Relative clauses
Relative clauses in Wolof may be either indefinite or definite. The syntactic behav-
iour of indefinite relative clauses containing adjectives is identical to that of rela-
tive clauses that contain other kinds of verbs, but the two are syntactically distin-
guishable within definite relative clauses, as mentioned in §1. While the syntactic
test is quite useful in distinguishing adjectives from other kinds of verbs, there is
not complete agreement among Wolof speakers as to which type of definite rela-
tive clause construction many verbs require. Moreover, as soon as a predicate ad-
jective is augmented by the addition of morphological or syntactic material such
as a tense morpheme or a second argument, relative clauses in which they occur
behave like those containing any other type of verb and the distinction is once
again neutralized.
3.1. INDEFINITE RELATIVE CLAUSES
Indefinite relative clauses involve a relativizer of the form /Cu/^3 in which C is a
noun class marker. The imperfective marker, /-y/, maybe added to the relativizer,
as in (36). The relative clause may be part of a larger noun phrase, as in (35) and
(36), or may constitute a noun phrase itself, as in (37) and (38). In (37) the 1-class is
the neutral class for indeterminate things, while in (38) the k-class is human sin-
gular.
(35) Ndox mu sedd laa begga naan
water REL ADj:cold isf:OFOC v:want v:drink
T want to drink cold water'
(36) nag wu-y lekk
cow REL-IMP v:eat
'a cow that is eating'
(37) Lu am solo laa la begg-oon wax
REL v:have importance isg:opoc isgO v:want-PAST v:say
T wanted to tell you something important'
(38) Am na fii ku soxor
v:have 3Sg:PERF LOG REL ADj:mean/evil
"There is someone evil here'3.2. DEFINITE RELATIVE CLAUSES
Definite relative clauses may also take a simple relativizer in conjunction with a
definite article that comes at the end of the noun phrase, a construction that is typ-
ical of adjectives. Again, the definite relative clause may be part of a larger noun(^3) Njie (1982: 61) refers to the relativizer as an adjective marker (marqueur d'adjectif) and considers
the relativizer and the adjectival verb to be an adjectival complex headed by a node ADJ.