Chapter 95Oblique Expressions and Verbless Utterances
Locative objects and adjuncts, complete noun-phrase utterances, echo questions, formal-noun endings, and ambient predicate boundaries.
95.1 Location and the argument–adjunct distinction
An expression of place, instrument or accompaniment can stand outside a predicate's core argument frame. Its grammatical status depends on the construction. Nakagawa contrasts two motion verbs with similar English translations but different requirements Nakagawa (2024: 127–128).
‘Someone entered the house.’
Nakagawa 2024: 128; Author's illustration 12
Ahun is intransitive; cise or ta is a postpositional phrase. The source leaves the actor unexpressed.
‘Someone jumped into the house.’
Nakagawa 2024: 128; Author's illustration 13
Osma takes a locative object, here cise or, without ta. The English ‘into’ does not correspond to an extra postposition in this example.
A locative noun can thus belong to a core object phrase. Conversely, a postpositional phrase can add an instrument, companion or place to a clause without changing the verb's argument count Nakagawa (2024: 127–128). Applicatives provide another construction, registering an object relation on the verb; see Chapter 78 (Applicative Constructions and Their Arguments).
95.2 Complete utterances without a verbal predicate
Tamura's sentence classification includes noun or adverbial phrases accompanied by a final particle, as well as verbal-predicate sentences, interjections and vocatives. Satō reproduces this classification and its examples Satō (2025: 354–355, §2.1). The following noun-phrase utterances are complete sentences under that description.
Nakagawa describes the ordinary sentence pattern around a verb phrase Nakagawa (2024: 362) and states that noun-ended sentences are generally avoided Nakagawa (2022: §2.1). These classifications differ in the kinds of utterance included and in the units used to describe them. Tamura's examples do not require an unspoken copula to be added to their published analysis.
95.3 Short questions and formal-noun endings
A short question can pick up material from a preceding utterance. Nakagawa's example asks whether a reference to having nothing to eat means a time of famine Nakagawa (2024: 409).
‘At the time of famine?’
Nakagawa 2024: 409; Saru, Example 846, citing Tamura 1984:26
This is an echo question about the preceding speaker's reference to a time without food. He follows the locative phrase.
Formal-noun clause endings form a separate descriptive group. Nakagawa gives questions ending in ruwe or hawe without ne, as well as rhetorical questions and exclamations with these endings Nakagawa (2024: 395–396).
Here the preceding clause contains verbal predicates. The bare ending is therefore a different issue from a noun-phrase-only utterance. Nakagawa also records affirmative replies with ruwe un, while noting that un itself has other uses and that this reply pattern may be limited to southern varieties Nakagawa (2024: 396). The range cannot be reduced to a single rule of optional copula deletion.
95.4 Ambient predicates and word boundaries
Expressions of weather and surrounding conditions contain verbal material even when they have no ordinary personal subject. Nakagawa initially presents zero-argument predicates with sir-, me- and related material, then explicitly revisits whether all such expressions are single words Nakagawa (2024: 128–131, 493).
He compares Refsing's aptoas with Tamura's apto as “it rains.” Because a zero-argument expression has no person index by definition, the usual person-position test cannot settle its word boundary Nakagawa (2024: 493). This uncertainty concerns compounding and segmentation; it does not establish an absence of a verb. See Chapter 89 (Subject Incorporation and External Possessors).