Relatives

Sometimes when we speak, we like to make things shorter. We often do this at the sentence level by making use of relatives.

What is a relative?

For instance, we take what could be two independent sentences and we turn them into one:

The man drinks water.
The water is good.

→

The man drinks water that is good.

Or:

The man drinks water.
The man is tall.

→

The man who is tall drinks water.

Note that in both examples, one of the original sentences remains mostly intact and appears to be in charge. This is the matrix clause. Within it, the other sentence plays a secondary role; it is the subordinate clause.

Using some brackets and our examples from above, we can clearly see this hierarchical relationship.

For instance:

The man drinks water [that is good].

Or:

The man [who is tall] drinks water.

The section in brackets, [that is good], is the subordinate clause of the sentence. The rest of the sentence is the matrix clause.

Note that in both examples, we use a special word as a relative marker to introduce the subordinate clause.

The man drinks water [that is good].

Or:

The man [who is tall] drinks water.

English uses a wide range of different words as relative markers (i.e., question or "WH" words [such as who, whose, whom, what, which, where, when] as well as that). When one of these words is placed next to a noun (i.e., "water" or "man"), it relativizes it.

These same basic concepts apply to relatives in Bambara even if things work quite differently than in English.

In Bambara, relative constructions are formed with a single relative marker min (REL) and one of two major strategies:

• Left-relatives: This is most typical way to form relatives in Bambara. But it's quite different from how we do things in English.
• Right-relatives: This is another way to form relatives in Bambara. It's less frequent in everyday speech even if it's totally acceptable and in some cases natural. It lines up much more closely with English in general.

Left-relatives

Left-relatives are those in which the subordinate clause appears to the left of the matrix clause. This is easier to understand if we simply build an example.

Let's start with two basic sentences. The first one will be our matrix clause and the second one our subordinate clause:

Cɛ bɛ muso fo
'The man greets the woman'

Muso ka ɲi
'The woman is good.'

In English, we would naturally combine these two sentences into something like this:

The man greets the woman [who is good]

(NOTE: Yes, it's entirely possible to simply say Cɛ bɛ muso ɲuman fo 'The man greets the good woman', but in that case you haven't built a relative sentence.)

Notice how the subordinate clause appears to the right of "woman". This is the opposite of how things are done in Bambara.

This is because in left-relatives the subordinate clause must appear to the left—that is, it must start the sentence.

What this means is that we are going to create a sentence that more literally translates into English as something like this:

The woman [who is good], the man greets her.

As such, we start with the subordinate clause Muso ka ɲi. At the same time, we insert the relative marker min directly following the noun.

Muso min ka ɲi…

'The woman who is good…'

This means that muso is the "relativized noun" of our sentence once it is complete.

(NOTE: I have translated min by 'who' in this sentence, but that's just for convenience's sake. In other cases, it will be better translated by other words that English uses for relatives: e.g., which, that, where, etc. In Bambara, you only need to learn min!)

Next, we need to add the matrix clause Cɛ bɛ muso fo. But we need to make a change!

We replace muso by a place-holder (which linguists call an anaphor) since it already appeared in the initial subordinate clause. (The technical term for the original noun—the one that we have relativized [i.e., muso]—is the antecedent.)

In this case, we will use the demonstrative pronoun o (lit. 'that'):

[Muso min ka ɲi], cɛ bɛ o fo

'The woman who is good, the man greets her'

(Lit. 'The woman who is good, the man greets that')

(NOTE: Yes, o literally means 'that', but in left-relatives in Bambara, it is the word that is generally used as an anaphor in relative sentences. You may occasionally hear à [he; she; it]. And as you will see in just a bit, in some cases, you must use something else entirely depending on the relativized noun: yen, ten, etc.)

Note how I've placed the initial clause in [brackets]. This is because it is the subordinate one. Compare it with our initial English sentence; we place it in an entirely different position:

[Muso min ka ɲi], cɛ bɛ o fo

VS

The man greets the woman [who is good]

Additionally, note how the woman (muso) is seemingly referred to twice compared to the English sentence where she appears once:

[Muso min ka ɲi], cɛ bɛ o fo

VS

The man greets the woman [who is good]

This is why Bambara relatives are often tricky for English speakers.

First of all, because putting the subordinate clause "to the left" is the default in Bambara. In English, we generally don't do this; we put our subordinate clauses "to the right" or we insert them directly within the matrix clause.

Second, because left-relatives are what linguists call co-relatives—that is, they involve placing the relativized noun in both the subordinate and the matrix clauses. In English, we don't do this at all.

To hammer all of this home, let's look at a few more examples. Let's start with two normal sentences. The first one will be our matrix clause.

Muso bɛ mobili boli
'The woman drives the car'

Mobili tiɲɛna 'The car broke (down)'

Now, let's build our relative sentence.

First, we build our subordinate clause via the relative marker min. Remember: it follows the thing which we are "relativizing":

[Mobili min tiɲɛna]…

'[The car which broke down]…'

Next, we add our matrix clause. Remember: we build it with o in place of the noun that is now relativized in the subordinate clause (i.e., mobili):

[Mobili min tiɲɛna], muso bɛ o boli
Lit. 'The car which broke down, the woman drives it'

(as in, 'The woman drives the car [that broke down]')

Just like in English, we can also reverse which clause is subordinate and get a different meaning. Let's switch things around:

Mobili tiɲɛna

Muso bɛ mobili boli

→

[Muso bɛ mobili min boli], o tiɲɛna
Lit. 'The car which the woman drives, it broke down'

(as in, 'The car [that the woman drives] broke down')

One last thing! Word-order does not change when making relatives in Bambara. This is so even when you relativize different parts of the sentence (i.e., the subject, the direct object, the indirect object, etc). This is very different from English.

Take a sentence like the following for instance:

[Cɛ min ye dulɔki di muso ma], o ka jan

'[The man who gave the shirt to the woman], he is tall'

If we translate this idiomatically it becomes something like:

'The man [who gave the shirt to the woman] is tall'

In English if we want to talk about the shirt instead of the man, we would need to move things around. We would naturally put "the shirt" at the beginning of our sentence:

'The shirt [that the man gave to the woman] is tall/long'

This doesn't happen in Bambara. We simply move the relative marker min. Note how the subject of the sentence changes in English, but not in Bambara:

Cɛ min ye dulɔki di muso ma…

'The man who gave the shirt to the woman…'

→

Cɛ ye dulɔki min di muso ma…

'The shirt which the man gave to the woman'

The same thing happens if we talk about the woman. The word order of the Bambara sentence in unchanged, but that of English changes:

Cɛ ye dulɔki di muso min ma…

'The woman who the man gave the shirt to…'

With a little bit of patience and practice, building relatives using the left-relative strategy of Bambara will eventually come second-nature to you!

For now, you need to make an explicit effort to not start a relative sentence without thinking about it first. If you start a relative sentence like you would in English, you will oftentimes find yourself stuck. This is because you need to start the sentence with what seems "less important" (that is, subordinate) instead of the matrix clause!

[N ye kuma min fɔ], i ye o faamu?

"[The words that I have said], you have understood it?"

(as in, "Have you understood what I have said?")

Plurals

When the noun of a relative sentence is plural, you need to pluralize both the relative marker min and the anaphor o. For instance, let's take our initial sentence and make the necessary changes:

Muso min ka ɲi, cɛ bɛ o fo

'The woman who is good, the man greets her'

First, we need to make muso min plural. We do this by adding -nu to min:

Muso minnu ka ɲi…

'The women who are good…'

(NOTE: You may also see min made plural in writing with the regular plural marker -w. In some cases, you may hear minnu pronounced [munnu].)

Notice that the plural marker is added to the relative marker min and not to the noun muso. In general, there is no need to add -w to muso because the plural relative marker minnu tell us implicitly that the noun is plural.

That said, it is technically possible to pluralize both the noun and the relative marker (i.e., Musow minnu ka ɲi...), so don't be surprised if you run into it.

Next, we need to adapt the anaphor o to match the fact that muso minnu is plural. To do this, we simply change o to its plural form olu (or more rarely, u 'they'):

Muso minnu ka ɲi, cɛ bɛ olu fo

'The women which are good, the man greets them'

(NOTE: You may have noticed something like a pattern here. The plural marker of o is -lu, the plural marker of min is -nu, and the normal plural marker is -w, which is pronounced [u]. These three forms which contain the vowel [u] are historically related. The original plural marker in Manding was -lu, which becomes -nu when it follows a nasal sound. In general, the two have been truncated and become -w [-u] in spoken Bambara and Jula. That said, the "full" forms are preserved in words like minnu and olu. You may also hear -lu and -nu preserved in other words, certain registers of speech, or other Manding varieties such as Maninka.)

Other anaphors

As you saw above, left-relatives require a place-holder or anaphor in the matrix clause.

Most times, you will use the demonstrative pronoun o (lit. 'that') or its plural form olu for such purposes. (Or, more rarely, the pronouns a/ale or u, respectively.)

But other contexts will require different words.

• When the relativized noun is a place or location, you will use yen (lit. 'there'):

  Sugu min fara, n taara yen

  'The market which filled, I went there'

  (as in, "I went to the market that filled up [with people]")

• When the relativized noun is related to time (cf. "when" in English relatives), you will use o tuma (lit. 'that moment') or o tuma na (lit. 'at that moment'):

  Waati min ka di i ye, an bɛ taa o tuma (na)

  'The time which is pleasing to you, we will go at that moment'

  (as in, "We will go when you want to go")

• When the relativized noun is related to manner (cf. "how" in English relatives), you will use ten (lit. 'like that'):

  Bamananw bɛ foli kɛ cogo min (na), n bɛ foli kɛ ten

  'The manner (in) which Bambara do greetings, I do greetings like that'

  (as in, "I greet how Bambara people greet")

• When the relativized noun is a general statement about a potential person (cf. "whoever" in English), you will use o tigi (lit. 'that owner'):

  Mɔgɔ min bɛ tubabukan fɔ, o tigi ka taa!

  'A person that speaks French, that person should leave!'

  (as in, 'Whoever speaks French should leave!')

Time, place and manner with tuma/yɔrɔ/cogo min (na)

You may have noticed that the idiomatic translations of some of the previous examples led to sentences which are not grammatically relatives in English. For instance:

Bamananw bɛ foli kɛ cogo min (na), n bɛ foli kɛ ten

'I greet how Bambara people greet'

This happens with certain words that are very often used in daily conversations when discussing time, location or manner.

As such, it can be helpful to look at them on their own.

They revolve around three generic words:

• tuma = time
• yɔrɔ = place
• cogo = manner

As you would expect, each word can be relativized with min. At the same time, they all have the particularity of optionally accepting the postposition na (cf. la, which becomes na after a nasal sound):

• tuma min (na) = the time (at) which
• yɔrɔ min (na) = the place (at) which
• cogo min (na) = the manner (in) which

Let's see each one of these in action to see how they typically translate idiomatically into something different in English.

• tuma min (na)

  Malidenw bɛ dumuni kɛ tuma min (na), n bɛ dumuni kɛ o tuma (na)

  'The time at which people eat in Mali, I eat at that time'

  (as in, 'I eat when Malians eat')

  You may also encounter other words related to time—don ('day'), dɔgɔkun ('week'), san ('year'), etc.—used in a similar way:

  Malidenw bɛ sun tigɛ don min (na), n bɛ sun tigɛ o don

  'The day upon which Malians break fast, I break fast that day'

  (as in, "I break fast when / on the day Malians break fast")

  In some cases, the anaphor in the matrix clause is dropped and understood contextually:

  I bɛ taa tuma min na, n fana bɛ taa (o tuma [na])

  'The time at which you go, I also go ([at] that time)'

  (as in, "I go when you go")

• yɔrɔ min (na)

  Malidenw bɛ dumuni kɛ yɔrɔ min (na), n bɛ dumuni kɛ yen

  'The place at which Malians eat, I eat there'

  (as in, 'I eat where Malians eat')

• cogo min (na)

  Malidenw bɛ dumuni kɛ cogo min (na), n bɛ dumuni kɛ ten

  'The manner in which Malians eat, I eat like that'

  (as in, 'I eat how Malians eat')

  You may also hear cogo min (na) used as something close to "in such a way that", but there is no explicit word meaning "that":

  Den kulela cogo min (na), n taara

  'The manner in which the child screamed, I left'

  (as in, 'The child cried in such a way, (that) I left')

  (Cf. tellement in French)

As you can see, these turns of phrase do not literally mean "when", "where" or "how", etc. But you will undoubtedly hear or need such relative constructions regularly as part of more complex ideas and sentiments.

Using min as a pronoun

Thus far we have seen that the relative marker min (or minnu when plural) goes after the noun that is relativized. For instance:

Mɔgɔ min taara…

'The person who left…'

But it can also act as a pronoun and replace the noun entirely. In this case, the noun is implied. For instance:

Min taara…

'(The person) who left…'

Let's make it into a full sentence so you can see what I mean:

Min taara, o ye n kɔrɔkɛ

'(The person) who left, that is my older brother'

(as in, "The person who left is my older brother")

As you can see, this pronominal min can be used for people. But it can also be used for things or states of affairs too. For example:

Fɛn min bɛ dɛbɛ kan, o ye n ta ye

'The thing that is on the mat, that is mine'

→

Min bɛ dɛbɛ kan, o ye n ta ye

"That which is on the mat, that is mine"

(as in, "What is on the mat is mine")

Or:

Fatɔw ye ko min kɛ Washington, o man di n ye

"The affairs which the crazy people did in Washington, that isn't pleasing to me"

→

Fatɔw ye min kɛ Washington, o man di n ye

"That which the crazy people did in Washington, that isn't pleasing to me"

(as in, "I don't like what the crazy people did in Washington")

Finally, min as a pronoun often shows up in acts of what linguists call ellipsis—the intentional omission of words that are otherwise considered necessary for sentence to be grammatically complete.

For instance, imagine an exchange like this one on a hot day in a shop where you want to buy a cold drink. The vendor opens his cooler, wondering which drink you would like:

– VENDOR: I bɛ jumɛn fɛ?
– YOU: Min ka suma!

– VENDOR: Which (one) do you want?
– YOU: (The one) which is cold!

As you can see pronominal min can be idiomatically translated into English in a range of ways based on the context. For instance:

• that which
• what
• the one which
• the person who

Grammatically, however, they are all the same thing in Bambara: min as a pronoun that takes the place of some previously mentioned or assumed entity.

Right-relatives

While left-relatives are the more common structure in Bambara (and Manding in general), it is also possible to place the subordinate clause to the right.

(NOTE: Some researchers have found that right-relatives occur at notably higher rates in the Bambara language press [e.g., newspaper articles, etc] compared to oral texts and natural conversation because of the influence of French, which uses a similar relative strategy.)

To see how this works, let's take two sentences and turn them into a single relative construction again. The first sentence will be our matrix clause:

Cɛ bɛ muso fo
'The man greets the woman'

Muso ka ɲi
'The woman is good.'

As a left-relative, we would start with the subordinate clause and end with the matrix:

[Muso min ka ɲi], cɛ bɛ o fo

In a right-relative, however, we start with the matrix clause:

Cɛ bɛ muso fo…

'The man greets the woman…'

And then we add the subordinate clause. To make things work, all we need to do is replace the relativized noun (i.e., muso) with the relative marker min:

Cɛ bɛ muso fo [min ka ɲi]

'The man greets the woman [who is good]'

Note, that the syntax of the sentence is underlyingly identical to that of English.

Let's look build another example to make things clear:

N ye cɛ fo
'I greet them man'

Cɛ tɛmɛna
'The man passes by'

N ye cɛ fo [min tɛmɛna]

'I greeted the man [who passed by]'

Note, it is entirely possible to express this proposition using the left-relative strategy. In fact, it would arguably be more typical:

[Cɛ min tɛmɛna], n y'o fo

'[The man who passed by], I greeted him'

That said, there aren't rules between when to use a left- or a right-relative strategy.

So how do you know whether to use a right-relative or a left-relative?

My advice is to opt for a left-relative as often as possible at first.

This is useful for two reasons. First, it's much more prevalent in spoken Bambara (and Manding) in general. Second, it's typically harder to English (and French) speakers to get used to. You should practice them as often as possible until it becomes second nature!

Summary

Let's summarize what we have learned here about relatives.

• There are two strategies for relatives in Bambara

  • Left (most frequent): A co-relative strategy where the relativized noun phrase is in the subordinate and main clauses.

    The relativized noun phrase is marked by min in the subordinate clause; it follows it as a determiner (Fɛn min ka di, o ye baro ye!; Mɔgɔ min nana kunun, o ye n kɔrɔkɛ ye) or it replaces it entirely as a pronoun (Min ka di, o ye baro ye!; Min nana kunun, o ye n kɔrɔkɛ ye).

    Requires the use of an anaphor (e.g., o [or less often à], yen, ten, o tuma (na), o tigi) that refers back to the relativized antecedent (i.e., X min).

    With some words related to time, location or manner one can freely choose between using the postposition la/na or not: tuma/yɔrɔ/cogo min (na).

    The relative marker in the plural is minnu (sometimes written minw) and can sometimes be pronounced [munnu]. In these cases, the anaphor becomes plural as well (i.e., olu, but occasionally u).

    [Mɔgɔ minnu sera kunun], n ye olu fo

    There is no need to change the word order of a sentence when using relatives like we often do in English.

    Cɛ min ye dulɔki di muso ma, o ka jan
    'The man [who gave the shirt to the woman] is tall'

    Cɛ ye dulɔki min di muso ma, o ka jan
    'The shirt [that the man gave to the woman] is tall/long'

    Cɛ ye dulɔki di muso min ma, o ka jan
    'The woman [who the man gave the shirt to] is tall'

  • Right (less frequent in spoken Bambara, but shows up in written texts because of the influence of French): The relative marker min appears as a pronoun that replaces the relativized noun.

    N ye muso fo [min nana]

    'I greeted the woman [who came]'

• Before translating an English relative, think about how the normal sentences would be constructed in Bambara. Otherwise, if the relativized noun is not the subject of the original sentence, you will get stuck or form something ungrammatical:

  The woman who the man gave the shirt to is tall

  Muso min cɛ ye dulɔki di ka jan …

  Cɛ ye dulɔki di muso min ma, o ka jan

  Lit. 'The man a shirt gave the woman which to, she is tall'