Descriptive relative clauses in Austro-Bavarian German

2013 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martina Wiltschko
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
World Knowledge ◽  
Upper Austria ◽  
Definite Articles ◽  
Restrictive Relative Clauses ◽  
Semantic Properties

AbstractThis article discusses the syntactic and semantic properties of descriptive relative clauses, a type of relative clause discussed in the literature on Chinese. It is argued that descriptive relative clauses are found in the dialect of Upper Austria, a version of Bavarian German. In particular this dialect has a set of reduced definite articles that are used for discourse referents that are intrinsically uniquely identifiable, as a matter of world knowledge. As such, they cannot be restricted by a relative clause, where restriction is taken to exclude alternatives. Such DPs can, however, be modified by descriptive relative clauses. I propose that descriptive relative clauses attach to NP while restrictive relative clauses attach to nP. Thus, the article contributes to determining whether there are different relative clauses associated with different layers of projections in the nominal domain.

scholarly journals Non-restrictive relative clauses in Arabic

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 54
Author(s):  
Abdulrahman A Alqurashi
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Preliminary Analysis ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Modern Standard Arabic ◽  
Standard Arabic ◽  
Restrictive Relative Clauses ◽  
Restrictive Relatives ◽  
Modern Standard ◽  
Minimalist Syntax

This paper discusses the syntax of non-restrictive relative clauses in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). It provides a thorough description of their structures and attempts to offer a preliminary analysis within the transformation framework: Minimalist syntax. Two relativization strategies are available for Arabic non-restrictive relative clauses. The first strategy is similar to that of definite restrictive relatives in which the relative clause is initiated by ʔallaðiwhich is a relative complementizer, whereas the second strategy is a unique one in which the relative clause is initiated by the special particle wa, appears to be a specifying coordinator, along with the complementizer ʔallaði. The paper also argues that De-Vries’s (2006) coordinate approach to appositive relatives can provide a straightforward account for some the facts of non-restrictive relative clauses in Arabic.

Resumptivity and two types of A′‑dependencies in the Minimalist Program

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-78
Author(s):  
Victor Junnan Pan
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Diagnostic Tests ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Minimalist Program ◽  
Locality Condition ◽  
Sharp Distinction ◽  
Crossover Effects ◽  
Locality Constraint ◽  
Left Dislocation ◽  
Semantic Properties

This paper examines the derivation of two types of A′-dependencies — relative clauses and Left-Dislocation structures — in the framework of Minimalist Program based on Mandarin data. Relatives and LD structures demonstrate many distinct syntactic and semantic properties when they contain a gap and a resumptive pronoun respectively. A thorough study of the relevant data reveals that when a gap strategy is adopted, island effects and crossover effects are always observed, irrespective of whether the relevant gap is embedded within a relative clause or within an LD structure; on the contrary, when the resumptive strategy is adopted, a sharp distinction is observed between these two structures. A resumptive relative clause gives rise to island effects and crossover effects systematically; by contrast, a resumptive LD structure never gives rise to these effects. In the Minimalist Program, island effects and crossover effects are not exclusively used as diagnostic tests for movement since the operation Agree is also subject to locality constraints. I will argue that a relative clause containing either a gap or an RP and an LD structure with gap are derived by Agree and they are subject to the locality condition whereas a resumptive LD structure is derived by Match that is an island free operation and it is not subject to the locality constraint. Multiple Transfer and multiple Spell-Out are possible in an Agree chain, but not in a Matching chain. The choice of the derivational mechanism depends on the interpretability of the formal features attached to the Probe and to the Goal in the relevant A′-dependencies.

scholarly journals Relative clause comprehension revisited: commentary on Eisenberg (2002)

2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 671-679 ◽  
Author(s):  
EVAN KIDD
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Real Time Processing ◽  
Time Processing ◽  
The Real ◽  
Syntactic Development ◽  
Restrictive Relative Clauses ◽  
Requirements Acquisition

Eisenberg (2002) presents data from an experiment investigating three- and four-year-old children's comprehension of restrictive relative clauses (RC). From the results she argues, contrary to Hamburger & Crain (1982), that children do not have discourse knowledge of the felicity conditions of RCs before acquiring the syntax of relativization. This note evaluates this conclusion on the basis of the methodology used, and proposes that an account of syntactic development needs to be sensitive to the real-time processing requirements acquisition places on the learner.

scholarly journals Some kind of relative clause

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 163-180
Author(s):  
Jon Ander Mendia
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Restrictive Relative Clauses ◽  
Special Case

Amount Relatives (ARs) differ from restrictive relative clauses in that they do notrefer to a particular object denoted by the head of the relative clause, but to an amount of suchobjects (Carlson, 1977a; Heim, 1987). Traditionally, ARs have been regarded as degree expressions.In this paper I argue against this view and propose instead that amount interpretations ofrelative clauses are in fact a special case of kind interpretation.Keywords: kind reference, amounts, relative clauses.

scholarly journals An HPSG analysis of the non-integrated wh-relative clauses in German

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anke Holler
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
Abstract Entity ◽  
Matrix Clause ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Restrictive Relative Clauses

In this article, the so-called wh-relative clause construction is investigated. The German wh-relative clauses are syntactically relevant as they show both, root clause and subordinate clause properties. They matter semantically because they are introduced by a wh-anaphor that has to be resolved by an appropriate abstract entity of the matrix clause. Additionally, the wh-relative clause construction is discourse-functionally peculiar since it evokes coherence. Besides these interesting empirical characteristics, whrelatives raise important theoretical questions. It is argued that the standard HPSG theory has to be extended to account for non-restrictive relative clauses in general, and to cope with the particular properties of the wh-relative construction.

scholarly journals Raising and matching in Pharasiot Greek relative clauses: A diachronic reconstruction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
METIN BAGRIACIK ◽  
LIEVEN DANCKAERT
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Landing Site ◽  
Functional Structure ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Restrictive Relative Clauses

This paper studies the structure and origin of prenominal and postnominal restrictive relative clauses in Pharasiot Greek. Though both patterns are finite and introduced by the invariant complementizer tu, they differ in two important respects. First, corpus data reveal that prenominal relatives are older than their postnominal counterparts. Second, in the present-day language only prenominal relatives involve a matching derivation, whereas postnominal ones behave like Head-raising structures. Turning to diachrony, we suggest that prenominal relatives came into being through morphological fusion of a determiner t- with an invariant complementizer u. This process entailed a reduction of functional structure in the left periphery of the relative clause, to the effect that the landing site for a raising Head was suppressed, leaving a matching derivation as the only option. Postnominal relatives are analyzed as borrowed from Standard Modern Greek. Our analysis corroborates the idea that both raising and matching derivations for relatives must be acknowledged, sometimes even within a single language.

Adnominal conditionals in German

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (s3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Blümel
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Recent Analysis ◽  
Short Paper ◽  
Internal Distribution ◽  
Restrictive Relative Clauses ◽  
Semantic Properties

AbstractIn this short paper I give a description of salient structural and semantic properties of adnominal conditional clauses in German, drawn from online corpora (cf. Lasersohn 1996 for the English counterpart). Facts from prosody tentatively indicate, and from Binding, DP-internal distribution and extraposition more distinctively suggest, the paper’s main conclusion: Syntactically, adnominal conditionals behave like restrictive relative clauses. I sketch a recent analysis by Frana (2017), which captures important semantic properties of the construction. A restrictor analysis of conditional clauses can be retained and indeed fits snugly with the fact that only intensional nouns co-occur with, e.g. can be modified by, adnominal conditionals.

Child and adult construal of restrictive relative clauses: Knowledge of grammar and differential effects of syntactic context

2007 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
CATHY FRAGMAN ◽  
HELEN GOODLUCK ◽  
LINDSAY HEGGIE
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Double Object ◽  
Mature Adult ◽  
Adult Performance ◽  
Proper Name ◽  
Restrictive Relative Clauses ◽  
Syntactic Context ◽  
Selection Of

We report four act-out experiments testing the sensitivity of adults and three- to five-year-old children to the distinction between restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses in English. Specifically, we test knowledge of the fact that restrictive relative clauses cannot modify a proper name head, and of the fact that relatives introduced by that (as opposed to a wh-pronoun) are obligatorily restrictive. Both children and adults show knowledge of these properties. No support was found for the hypothesis that children extend the block on proper name heads to wh-relatives. Both children and adults are sensitive to the syntactic context (double object vs. existential) in which the relative clause is embedded. However, adults differ from children in four respects. First, in the double object context, adults are more likely than children to commit the error of construing a that relative as referring to a proper name head. Second, the effect of syntactic context on selection of a head is larger for adults than for children. Third, for adults, but not for children, the effect of syntactic context interacts with the type of relative clause. Fourth, adults, but not children, are influenced by whether they hear the existential context before the double object context. We propose that by three to four years of age children have acquired an adult-like grammar of relative clauses, and that the differences we see in child and adult performance can be attributed to that grammar in combination with a mature (adult) or immature (child) sentence processing capacity.

Headless Relative Clauses in Iliatenco Me'phaa

2021 ◽  
pp. 177-220
Author(s):  
Philip T. Duncan ◽  
Harold Torrence
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Free Relative ◽  
Semantic Properties

This chapter documents the morpho-syntactic and semantic properties of headless relative clauses in a variety of Meꞌphaa spoken in Iliatenco, Guerrero, Mexico. Meꞌphaa possesses four types of headless relative clauses, which can be divided into two groups: those introduced by wh-expressions (free relative clauses), and those not introduced by wh-expressions. The former type is composed of three varieties: maximal free relative clauses, which are largely productive; existential free relative clauses, which are limited to a few wh-expressions; and free-choice free relative clauses, which are introduced by ájndo ‘until.’ The second type of headless relative clause is simply introduced by a relativizer/subordinator. Nearly all Meꞌphaa wh-expressions participate in some or all kinds of free relative clauses. However, the inanimate argument wh-expression dí(ne) ‘what’ seems to be robustly impermissible in such constructions.

scholarly journals Split-antecedent relative clauses and the symmetry of predicates

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 253-270
Author(s):  
Claudia Poschmann ◽  
Sascha Bargmann ◽  
Christopher Götze ◽  
Anke Holler ◽  
Manfred Sailer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Coordinate Structure ◽  
Transitive Verb ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Restrictive Relative Clauses ◽  
Grammatical Functions

This paper presents the results of two experiments in German testing the acceptabilityof (non-)restrictive relative clauses (NRCs/RRCs) with split antecedents (SpAs). Accordingto Moltmann (1992), SpAs are only grammatical if their parts occur within the conjuncts ofa coordinate structure and if they have identical grammatical functions. Non-conjoined SpAsthat form the subject and the object of a transitive verb are predicted to be ungrammatical. Ourstudy shows that the acceptability of such examples improves significantly if the predicate thatrelates the parts of the SpA is symmetric. Moreover, it suggests that NRCs and RRCs behavedifferently in these cases with respect to the SpA-construal. We can make sense of this observationif we follow Winter (2016) in assuming that transitive symmetric predicates have to beanalyzed as unary collective predicates and thus provide a collective antecedent for the RC atthe semantic (not the syntactic) level. As we will argue, this accounts for some of the disagreementwe found in the literature and gives us new insights into both the semantics of symmetricpredicates and the semantics of NRCs.Keywords: non-restrictive relative clause, restrictive relative clause, symmetric predicate, splitantecedent.

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