156 Michael Fortescue
The phenomenon in (1) to (5) is part of a structural phenomenon which
Nakayama calls ‘serialization’, which combines multiple clauses into units
expressing a single State of Affairs (actually some of the example sen-
tences strictly speaking represent other parallel clausal relationships such
as ‘modification’, which do not allow word-order variation according to
pragmatic factors in the way serialization as Nakayama defines it does).
This is an event-encoding strategy for combining predicates into informa-
tionally dense predications – dense in terms of participant structure or
event specification – which cannot be expressed in a single word (Naka-
yama 1997: 119ff.).^9 The shared inflectional suffixes (none of them
actually obligatory) are generally gathered on the first constituent, what-
ever it is. The non-initial element can take a more limited array of suffixes
(mainly for aspect, as in (7) below). Serialization proper serves a number
of discourse purposes besides that of the kind of construction illustrated
above. Sentences such as (2) do not really bear any special focus according
to Nakayama (pers. comm.), since there is no flexibility of ordering choice
with the particular predicate involved. Similarly, the order is obligatory
with negative and interrogative words such as the following, where there is
no special focus – or rather only ‘default’ focus on the initial constituents:
(7) wik’-a hauk-ši
not-TEL eat-MOM
‘He did not eat’
(8) aqish-w’it’as-a-it-ħ suw’a inm’i:-či
why-about.to-TEL-PAST-INTERR you snail-INCHO
‘Why would you become a snail?’
(9) wa:-yaq-pi-mit-ħ awa: town
which-most-PAST-3SG.INTER near town
‘Which was the closest town?’
In (9) note that even the modifying suffixes that belong semantically with
the adjectival predicate awa: has been positioned on the interrogative
constituent appearing as predicate of the whole sentence.
In the following the adverbial predicate glossed ‘very’ can be said to be
well-suited as focus owing to its inherent meaning:
(10) i:ħ kwi:s-ħi
very strange-DUR
‘It is very strange’