Relative Clauses

01

Nothing at All

• Makim wanpela su yu laik werim.

  Choose a shoe you want to wear.

yu laik werim follows su directly. There is no relative pronoun, and none is missing - this is the normal construction. English happens to allow the same thing here ("a shoe you want to wear"), which makes it a good starting point, but English only permits the omission when the noun is the object of the relative clause. Tok Pisin has no such restriction.

• Dispela buk diksineri ol i wokim long pepa i no strong.

  This dictionary, which they made from paper, isn't strong.

Here the added clause is ol i wokim long pepa - "they made it from paper". English cannot leave "which" out of that sentence; Tok Pisin does not supply one.

02

Where the Noun Is the Subject

When the noun is doing the action, the predicate marker i appears in front of the verb, exactly as it would in a main clause.

• Meri ya gat wanpela kar i save ron isi stret.

  That woman has a car that runs really smoothly.

wanpela kar i save ron isi stret - "a car [that] runs smoothly". The i is not a relative pronoun; it is the same predicate marker as everywhere else. But because it reliably announces a predicate, it is your best clue that a new clause has started.

03

Using 'i' to Find the Boundaries

Since nothing marks where a relative clause begins or ends, the markers become the punctuation. Take the dictionary sentence apart:

• Dispela buk diksineri - this dictionary - the subject
• ol i wokim long pepa - they made it from paper - the relative clause, with its own subject ol and its own marker
• i no strong - isn't strong - the main predicate, its marker attaching back to the subject

Two is, two predicates, and the first one belongs to an embedded subject. Reading Tok Pisin fluently is largely a matter of tracking which subject each marker points back to.

04

'husat' for People

There is one true relative pronoun, husat, the same word as the question "who". It is used for people and is much less common than the bare construction.

• Em wanpela man husat i save gut tru long pilai gita.

  He's a man who plays guitar really well.

Note that i still appears after it, so husat is an addition to the normal pattern rather than a replacement for it.

05

Compare a Main Clause

The identical string of words can be a complete sentence on its own. Nothing about the clause changes when it becomes a modifier; only its position does.

• Naispela piksa i hangamap long wol.

  A nice picture hangs on the wall.

Standing alone, that is a statement. Placed after a noun, the same shape would describe it. Tok Pisin builds this out of word order and the predicate marker alone, and needs no special machinery for it.