User:Kayau/Clause chaining

Clause chaining is a mechanism of linking clauses whereby only one of the remaining clauses, typically the last, is finite. It is commonly used in narratives. Switch-reference is an important syntactic phenomenon arising from clause chaining. It is most common in the languages of New Guinea, Australia and the Americas. A language with clause-chaining phenomena is known as a clause-chaining language, though similar phenomena can also be found in most languages like English

Structure
Clause chains have a finite clause, commonly called a final clause because of its most common position. The rest of the clauses are known as medial or non-final clauses, which have reduced tense-aspect-mood inflectional marking, specifies the subject with reference to that of the finite clause, and are temporally related to other medial clauses. For example in the following clause chain, the medial clauses are untensed (in the present participle), have the same subject ('Mary') as the final clause, and are ordered according to chronological succession. The final clause is tensed (in the past tense):


 * Looking at the clock, remembering that she could not finish the article in a night, realising the deadline was still a week away, Mary decided to go to bed.

Synchronic typology
Clause chains

Switch-reference
ŋathu nhinha tharlpa-rdaka-rna waɾa-yi thika-lha

ŋathu nhinha tharlpa-rdaka-rna waɾa-yi thika-rnanhthu