This section will gives the basics of how (verbal) clauses work, discussing the ordering of elements within them. It lays out the foundation for the sections to come.
This section covers the following:
The basic structure of clauses in Skerre can be characterized by the following schema:
| Verbal Complex | Associated NPs & Adverbials |
Thus, to a first approximation, a clause will be grammatical (though perhaps awkward) under any permutation of the postverbal words, as long as the verbal complex (usually just the verb itself) is first.
Even though the morphosyntax proper is reasonably lenient about where postverbal words go, there are several other constraints governing the order of postverbal elements. These are given below.
Weight refers to the amount of material in a phrase. The only weight category that is a factor in sentence ordering in Skerre is 'heavy'; that is, constituents that are very long, such as a complement clause or an NP followed by a relative clause. Without fail, 'heavy' constituents must appear at the right edge of the clause, graphically:
[S X Heavy]
(where X stands for all non-heavy material)
The restriction is demonstrated in the following:
(See here for more on the structure of relative clauses.)
Eseni tsa Yaretar a keriyos to enara ya ten wesas. PFV-draw.picture ERG (name) ABS man REL PFV-help DAT 3SG yesterday Verbal Complex Erg NP |------------------- Heavy (NP with RelC) ----------------| Yaretar drew the man who he helped yesterday.
In sentences with two or more non-verbal, non-heavy constituents (basically, those made of ordinary NPs), the order is constrained by information status. Information status (as I intend it here) is a relationship between particular parts of the sentences and their context — linguistic expressions can be new or old to the discourse (= conversation, narrative) and new or old to the hearer.
In Skerre, NPs that provide new information (or renew an old referent's salience again) tend to appear closer to the end of the clause than those that provide older or backgrounded information. Graphically, this is:
[S Verbal Complex < Old/Backgrounded < New/Foregrounded ]
To illustrate this, let us assume that in a particular context, a collection of hunters have been under discussion. If the next sentence was in answer to the (implicit or overt) question: "What did the hunters kill?", the order would be as follows:
Esotin tsa sraarahan a tsiitsique. PFV-dead-TRZ ERG AGT-PL~hunt ABS PL~deer Verbal Complex Old New The hunters killed the deer.
If instead, the deer had been under discussion previously (but the same proposition was relevant to the discussion), the order will be as follows:
Esotin a tsiitsique tsa sraarahan. PFV-dead-TRZ ABS PL~deer ERG AGT-PL~hunt Verbal Complex Old New The hunters killed the deer.
This phenomenon is not restricted to just ergative and absolutive NPs; any adjunct or argument NPs (that's not heavy) could, in principle, appear immediately after the verb. Thus, if the kill and Tsotar were already introduced, the order would be as follows:
Eyaas ya Karak tsa Tsotar a rahano. PFV-give DAT (name) ERG (name) ABS hunt-PDT.NMLZ Verbal Complex Old, More Salient Old, Less Salient New Tsotar gave the kill to Karak.
In this last example, there is an additional factor noted, saliency. This is due to the fact that the postverbals are not strictly divided into old and new. Rather, the referents in play are ranked in respect to each other, in terms of previous discourse use, hearer/domain-specific knowledge, and projected future discourse use (and possibly others). So, a single NP can be newer/more salient compared with one of its fellow actants and older/less salient than another and be linearly ordered in between them, as tsa Tsotar is. This also allows for an ordering in an discourse-initial clause, where all entities are discourse-new.
The interaction of information status here only applies to full NPs. As discussed in previous sections, the pronominals have their own positioning, independent of anything discussed in this section. Also, the above restrictions only operate within clauses.
Adverbials, besides those discussed previously (such as the phrase so torni, swiftly), tend to appear either at the end of sentences, or postverbally, due to the information status considerations above. Thus, in a context where downnriver is newer and locally more salient, this order will hold:
Quoquos quatsarok a Tsotar. PROG~go downriver ABS (name) Tsotar is going downriver.
The postverbal position is required of certain adverbials (always single words). These adverbials are usually temporal in nature. Examples are given below. Notice how quatsarok, downriver has moved to the end of the clause.
Quos tawiye a Tsotar quatsarok. PROG-go always ABS (name) downriver Tsotar always goes downriver.
Quos siyar a Tsotar quatsarok. PROG-go often ABS (name) downriver Tsotar often goes downriver.
Thus, with the adverbials discussed in the previous section on verbal satellites, adverbials, overall, can appear in the following three places (represented by the carets):
| Verbal ^ Complex | ^ | Arguments | ^ |