A Grammar of Miya - UCLA Department of Linguistics

230 A Grammar of Miya
(65a), gwalfa 'chieftainship', but not ngan 'name', has been previously mentioned, and the
kif here cannot be a topic marker since the phrase is actually afocused subject, as shown by
thejiy (S:§2.2.4, 12:§2.2.1), hence kif must apply only to N 2 . In (65b, c), neither syntax.
nor pragmatics reveal the scope of kif: in (65b) kif cannot be a modifier of only N2 since it
is a personal pronoun and is thus inherently definite and referential, but here kif seems to be
a topic marker and probably therefore takes the entire NP, not just N 1> into its scope; in
(65c), both Nt jif" 'husband' (in the context, not actually "husband", but rather the man to
whom another man's wife has gone to live with) and N2 'am 'woman' are definite.
Because kif is adjacent to the latter, intuitively it would seem to be this N to which it
applies. I know of no way to prove, given present data, that it does not apply to Nt or to
the whole phrase, but I have found no examples parallel to (65a) where kif could apply to
Nt only.
4.1.2. Relative clauses as determiners. In contrast to other Chadic languages,
including Rausa, noun phrases containing relative clauses usually do not contain other
determiners. The presence of a relative clause does not preclude other determiners, as the
NP initial nlfka in (66) shows, and a common way to introduce new elements into a
narrative is to use a presentative sentence with a noun modified by an indefinite determiner
and an extraposed relative clause, as in (67):
(66) too naka tal ba na d-aa biy 'ara ka, t-aa 'area) ee-wutay 'onaa niya zok-uwso
'well, that beer that he will cook, he will cook it in conjunction with his uncles'
(67) wiy war jiyeeyi ba na d-aa aom-uwso
'there is a certain festival that they do' (lit. 'a certain festival there is that they do-it')
Nonetheless, few examples of noun phrases containing relative clauses that I collected
through elicitation contain any determiner (see lO:§5.2 for examples). In texts, aside from
a small number of examples like that in (66) with a demonstrative, most cases of
determiners in NP's containing relative clauses fall into two classes: those with an
indefinite determiner as in sentences of the type in (67) and topicalized NP's ending in kif.
As it happens, NP's containing relative clauses are often placed sentence initial as topics
(cf. (66)), which gives the impression that NP's containing relative clauses tend also to
have a previous reference marker. However, non-topicalized NP's with relative clauses
rarely have a determiner of any kind:
(68) do baa-za aakan hajifa baa nja d-aalu-was"
'she goes to the house of the man whom she loves! -him)'
(69) miy aa zaa baa d" faara buwahiy-uws"
'we will install [as chief] the one who was first to come'
4.1.3. Numerals as determiners. There is a tendency for at least indefinite
determiners (§ 1) not to co-occur with numerals used as nominal attributives:
9. Reference, Definiteness, Universality, and Reflexivity! §4)
(70) a. Farkoo taariyhiy na Miya, s_ba tsar do faara buwahiya-t1gn.
'The beginning of the history of Miya, two men were the first to come.'
b. Waatoo san wuta do faara buwahiy-uwso do tsgg-uwso aaMangiia.
'That is, one man was the first to come, and he settled at Mangila.'
(71) a. bazaniy wuta njo g-aa paa dzafo har vaatlo
'one!a girl (she) may collect as many as five men [as suitors],
b. wiya 'am, kaafin miya-za, nj-aa bna dzafo vaatl"
'a woman, before her death, she may marry five husbands'
The sentences in (70) come from the beginnings of narrative histories and are the first
mentions of the referents. In a number of other narratives, the first mention of new
characters uses the indefinite determiners. The sentences in (71) have NP's in almost
identical contexts, one uses the numeral wuta 'one', the other the definite determiner wiya.
I doubt, on the basis of data from other Chadic languages, that co-occurrence of
numerals and indefinite determiners results in ungrammaticality, but I have no examples
from texts or elicited data of the type (?)niywiy sab" ts_r 'a certain two men' (cf. the
grammatical Hausa phrase wadansu mutane biyu). I do have examples of demonstratives
and numerals co-occurring, e.g. niykin cuw dar8itim 'these ten goats' .
4.2. Generic nouns. Nouns used in a generic sense have no determiners:
(72) Generic Subject
a. kwaa zaa vuw aa aa 'am ka, wiy hanjiyeeyi ham ba na d-aa cfgrnaw
'when a woman becomes pregnant, there is a thing that is done'
(see fn. 14 for ordering of subject in the first clause)
b. kwaa mba-uwsg washasham ka, ...
'if the rainy season ["the" in generic sense] is good, ... '
c. aa 'iyka saba d-aa daaa buwahiya-t1on
'thereupon people came in great numbers [to settle at Miya]'
(73) Generic Object
a. do baa-zeal ee kuwa aabiy
b. ee doona tliwiy n-aatsakan
c. do tokona-ya gaangan
d. nj-aa kona dlarkiy
'she went to draw water'
'to hunt wild animals [animal of-bush],
'they beat drums [drum] for him'
'she buys a chicken'
e. mukwa na d-aa biyu saa tal ka, a tsaa ngan muku taka
'on the day that they will drink beer, they will perform the naming [will give
name] on that day'
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