Advanced patterns

01Nested relative clauses

A relative clause can contain another relative clause. This happens when describing something that is itself described by a clause.

Basic nesting

Breaking this down: - Inner relative clause: whu nophi kealo miona, "the person who creates stories" - Outer relative clause: whu [inner clause] to thumela lopia, "the child whom [that person] taught" - Main clause: mia ... sano, "I know..."

The structure nests like parentheses:

mia [whu [whu nophi kealo miona] to thumela lopia] sano

Processing nested relatives

Nested relatives require careful attention. The listener must: 1. Recognize the first whu: a relative clause is starting 2. Recognize the second whu: another relative clause is starting inside the first 3. Find the noun after the inner clause's verb: that closes the inner clause 4. Find the noun after the outer clause's verb: that closes the outer clause 5. Continue with the main clause

This is cognitively demanding. In practice, speakers often break complex descriptions into separate sentences:

Instead of:

mia whu whu nophi kealo miona to thumela lopia sano

Consider:

Splitting reduces nesting and aids comprehension.

When nesting is unavoidable

Sometimes the nested structure is exactly what you need:

This precisely captures: there's a person I love; that person created a story; that story is beautiful. The relationships are all contained in one utterance.

Depth limits

In principle, nesting can continue indefinitely. In practice, more than two levels becomes nearly impossible to process:

whu whu whu ... miona ... nophi ... shelu ...

If you find yourself going three levels deep, restructure. Break it into multiple sentences. Phi's topic-drop makes this easy:

02Relative clauses with complementizers

Relative clauses can contain embedded statements (tha/tho), quotations (sha/sho), or embedded questions (pha/pho).

Containing tha/tho

Structure: - Relative clause subject gap: "the person who knows [something]" - Inside the relative: tha mia so shua tho, "that I will come" - The person knows that I will come

Another example:

The gap is in subject position: the story is what does the saying. tho closes the embedded statement; the head noun nophi closes the relative clause.

Containing sha/sho

The quotation sits inside the relative clause. The quoted words are preserved exactly.

Containing pha/pho

The embedded question pha shia so shua pho is the object of sano inside the relative clause.

03Interaction with topic-drop

Topic-drop and relative clauses work together. A noun introduced with a relative clause becomes a topic that subsequent sentences can reference implicitly.

Establishing and continuing

The flower, once introduced with its full description, becomes the understood subject of thuroa. When it returns as an object, a light ha peloru names it again: topic-drop reaches established subjects, not objects.

Switching topics

When you want to change the topic, introduce a new noun (with or without a relative clause):

The tree becomes the new topic; "large" describes the tree, not the flower.

Extended discourse example

Topics shift naturally: person → story → person. Relative clauses identify which person and which story we mean, while topic-drop keeps the prose flowing.

04Relative clauses in reported speech

When quoting or reporting speech that contains relative clauses, the structure embeds naturally.

Direct quotation

The relative clause whu mia to kealo shelu sits inside the quotation.

Indirect report

Note the pronoun shift: inside indirect speech, "I" becomes "they."

05Possessed nouns inside relative clauses

Possession is bare juxtaposition, the possessor standing directly before the possessed noun. Inside a relative clause, nothing changes:

"My book" (mia shelu) is the clause's object; the head miona is the one who read it.

Here the possessed phrase shia peloru ("their flower") is the object, and the mua whose object never arrives marks the oblique gap that the head thepalu fills.

06Complex real-world example

Let's build a paragraph using multiple relative clauses, complementizers, and topic-drop:

This passage uses: - Locative relative clause (whu mua shelira nai womu) - Subject-gap relative clause (whu mua ha womu nai miona) - Object-gap relative clause (whu mia to hea nophi) - Embedded tha/tho inside a relative clause - Headless relative clause (whu shia to haolu) - Topic-drop throughout

Nothing new was needed to combine them; each pattern keeps its own rules.