Chapter 101P and Pe: Participants, Content, and Clause Endings
Sound-conditioned forms, phrase scope, relative participants, instrumental heads, content nominalization, human reference, and normative and linking uses.
101.1 Forms and phrase scope
The forms p and pe follow verbal material to form expressions referring to a thing, person, or situation. Satō gives p after a vowel and pe after a consonant Satō (2008: 177). The relevant sound is the one immediately before the form, even when a longer phrase precedes it.
Analyses differ over its grammatical category. Nakagawa argues for a clitic analysis of phrase-level nominalizers because their scope includes the entire preceding phrase Nakagawa (2022: §3.3). Satō distinguishes a relative-clause head with concrete reference from a nominalizer of a whole clause, allowing p/pe in both functions Satō (2008: 175, 177–180). A written hyphen or space alone does not resolve this difference.
101.2 A participant identified by a clause
When p/pe denotes a participant, the preceding clause specifies which participant is meant. The head can correspond to an object, a subject, or a relation expressed by another element in that clause Nakagawa (2024: 503–504, 512).
‘There is nothing for me to drink hot water with.’
Nakagawa 2024: 504; Saru, Example 1156
P identifies the instrument associated with ani, here a drinking vessel. Usey ‘hot water’ is the object of ku ‘drink’.
Nakagawa requires ani in this instrumental example. The head's general meaning ‘thing’ does not remove the need to express its relation to the action. Applicative constructions provide another way to express such relations; see Chapter 82 (Multiple Applicatives, Incorporation, and Relative Clauses).
‘They cut up what I had been carrying and filled the pot.’
Nakagawa 2024: 512; Saru, Example 1179
Nakagawa identifies pe as the object of se and the subject of okay. The later cutting and filling predicates have zero third-person marking; a=se identifies the narrative ‘I’ only as the carrier.
Here carrying is expressed by se; okay is the plural existential. The same head participates in both linked clauses. Although its lexical meaning is light, it remains an overt head in this analysis. The separate questions of headless and internally headed relatives are discussed in Chapter 104 (General Heads, Gapless Clauses, and Internal-Head Analyses).
101.3 A situation or content
In other uses, p/pe presents the content of the preceding clause as a whole. Nakagawa contrasts the preceding participant examples with a statement about not understanding why people are speaking and crying Nakagawa (2024: 512–513).
‘I did not understand why they were speaking that way and crying.’
Nakagawa 2024: 512–513; Saru, Example 1180
The unknown content is the situation or reason for it. Nakagawa explicitly rejects an interpretation in which the speaker does not know which people are crying.
The distinction concerns the role of the whole expression. It cannot be reduced to p/pe always denoting something concrete and hi always denoting something abstract. The range of hi and other formal nouns is described in Chapter 102 (Lexical Heads and Formal-Noun Nominalization).
101.4 People, expectations, and clause endings
Pe can refer to a person. Satō notes that this often has an unfavorable tone, as in wen pe ‘bad person’, and contrasts politer kur Satō (2008: 180). The tendency does not make every human use of pe derogatory.
Satō also describes final p/pe as frequently conveying regret, surprise, or other emotion Satō (2008: 177–178). Nakagawa relates adversative linking p/pe to content nominalization, while recognizing that the linked expression no longer functions as a subject or object of the following clause Nakagawa (2024: 513). Participant reference, content nominalization, normative predication, and clause linkage are distinct uses that must be interpreted in their own constructions.