Chapter 20 Relative clauses
Describing within
A single adjective cannot identify everything a conversation may need. Sometimes the useful description is a whole event: the flower that I saw or the person who came yesterday. A relative clause lets that event modify a noun.
English usually puts the description after its noun. Phi puts the relative clause first and opens it with whu.
From adjective to clause
The phrase mioru peloru places "beautiful" before "flower." A relative clause occupies the same broad side of the noun:
whu mia to nila peloru mioru nai.
REL 1SG PST see flower beautiful be.
Inside the subject phrase, mia to nila means "I saw" with an object left unspoken. whu marks that gap as a description, and peloru supplies the missing object as the head noun. The complete phrase whu mia to nila peloru is the subject of nai.
The cost of hearing the description first
The head noun closes a headed relative clause, so its boundary is audible without a separate closer. That helps with scope, but the order has a cost: the listener must hold the description before learning whether it belongs to a flower, a book, or something else. Long relative clauses are legal. Two shorter sentences are often easier company.
Once the referent is established, ordinary topic-drop can lighten the next sentence:
whu mia to nila peloru mioru nai. thuroa.
REL 1SG PST see flower beautiful be. grow.
The omitted subject of thuroa is recovered from context. This is the same topic-drop available after any established subject; the relative clause has merely supplied a particularly detailed one.