Relative Clauses in Carapan Purepecha

Abstract

Relative clauses in Purepecha need special subordinate mood markers, as well as “reduced” aspectual forms (Andrews 2007). This paper shows that internally-headed relative clauses in Purepecha, although marked, are not completely ungrammatical, a fact that might contribute to strengthen the hypothesis that Purepecha used to be an SOV language (Villavicencio 2002; Nava and Capistrán 1998). Also, it is argued that, in externally-headed relative clauses, the head noun can retain the case marker that would correspond to its grammatical role in the subordinate clause.