7.10. Relativized pro-sumti: ke'a

The following cmavo are discussed in this section:

ke'a

KOhA

relativized sumti

This pro-sumti is used in relative clauses (explained in Chapter 8 ) to indicate how the sumti being relativized fits within the clause. For example:

Example 7.69.

mi	catlu	lo	mlatu	poi	[zo'e]
I	see	a	cat	such-that	something-unspecified

zbasu	ke'a		lei	slasi
makes	the-thing-being-relativized-[the-cat]	from	some-mass-of	plastic.

I see a cat made of plastic.

If ke'a were omitted from Example 7.69 , it might be confused with:

Example 7.70.

mi	catlu	lo	mlatu	poi
I	see	a	cat	such-that

[ke'a]	zbasu	lei	slasi
the-thing-being-relativized-[the-cat]	makes	a-mass-of	plastic

I see a cat that makes plastic.

The anaphora cmavo ri cannot be used in place of ke'a in Example 7.69 and Example 7.70 , because the relativized sumti is not yet complete when the ke'a appears.

Note that ke'a is used only with relative clauses, and not with other embedded bridi such as abstract descriptions. In the case of relative clauses within relative clauses, ke'a may be subscripted to make the difference clear (see Section 8.10 ).