SIL Mexico

This article presents the basic facts about relative clauses in Seri, including their morphology (as nominalizations), syntax (head-internal), and distribution in discourse (relatively infrequent). The heads of intransitive relatives may be formally marked as definite when the content of the relative is being emphasized. Ambiguity is avoided in transitive relatives by the omission of the definite article on the head. While some kinds of recursion of relative clauses are possible, others are not. Throughout this presentation, relative clauses are distinguished from formally identical but pragmatically distinct constructions in the language.