The rise and fall of a rogue relative construction

2001 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Deutscher
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Main Clause

In the earliest attested stage of the Akkadian language, relative clauses were introduced by a pronoun which agreed in case with the head noun in the main clause, rather than with the relativized NP in the relative clause. Such a system is extremely rare across languages, is demonstrably dysfunctional, and has been termed ‘inherently disfavoured’. This article attempts to explain how Akkadian acquired this rogue relative construction, and how the language then managed to get rid of it. I argue that this construction was only an unstable way-station in the emergence of a new relative clause in the language. The final section of the article examines the few parallels from other languages to the Old Akkadian system.

scholarly journals Cyclicity and Connectivity in Nez Perce Relative Clauses

2016 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 427-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Rose Deal
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Intermediate Position ◽  
Nez Perce ◽  
The Core ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Relative Pronouns

This article studies two aspects of movement in relative clauses, focusing on evidence from Nez Perce. First, I argue that relativization involves cyclic Ā-movement, even in monoclausal relatives: the relative operator moves to Spec,CP via an intermediate position in an Ā outer specifier of TP. The core arguments draw on word order, complementizer choice, and a pattern of case attraction for relative pronouns. Ā cyclicity of this type suggests that the TP sister of relative C constitutes a phase—a result whose implications extend to an ill-understood corner of the English that-trace effect. Second, I argue that Nez Perce relativization provides new evidence for an ambiguity thesis for relative clauses, according to which some but not all relatives are derived by head raising. The argument comes from connectivity and anticonnectivity in morphological case. A crucial role is played by a pattern of inverse case attraction, wherein the head noun surfaces in a case determined internal to the relative clause. These new data complement the range of existing arguments concerning head raising, which draw primarily on connectivity effects at the syntax-semantics interface.

Intervention in relative clauses: Effects of relativized minimality on L2 representation and processing

2020 ◽  
pp. 026765832095874
Author(s):  
Vera Yunxiao Xia ◽  
Lydia White ◽  
Natália Brambatti Guzzo
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
First Language ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Intervention Effect ◽  
Intervention Effects ◽  
Relativized Minimality ◽  
The Subject ◽  
L1 Acquisition ◽  
Picture Identification

This article reports on an experiment investigating the effects of featural Relativized Minimality (Friedmann et al., 2009) on the representation and processing of relative clauses in the second language (L2) English of Mandarin speakers. Object relatives (ORCs) are known to cause greater problems in first language (L1) acquisition and in adult processing than subject relatives (SRCs). Featural Relativized Minimality explains this in terms of intervention effects, caused by a DP (the subject of the ORC) located between the relative head and its source. Intervention effects are claimed to be reduced if the relative head and the intervenor differ in features, such as number (e.g. I know the king who the boys pushed). We hypothesize that L2 learners will show intervention effects when processing ORCs and that such effects will be reduced if the intervenor differs in number from the relative head. There were two tasks: picture identification and self-paced reading. Both manipulated relative clause type (SRC/ORC) and intervenor type (±plural). Accuracy was high in interpreting relative clauses, suggesting no representational problem. Regarding reading times, ORCs were processed slower than SRCs, supporting an intervention effect. However, faster reading times were found in ORCs when intervenor and head noun matched in number, contrary to hypothesis. We suggest that our more stringent stimuli may have resulted in the lack of an effect for mismatched ORCs, in contrast to some earlier findings for L1 acquirers.

Headless Relative Clauses in Yucatec Maya

2021 ◽  
pp. 444-474
Author(s):  
Scott AnderBois ◽  
Miguel Oscar Chan Dzul
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Indigenous Language ◽  
Yucatec Maya ◽  
Southern Mexico ◽  
Syntactic Form ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Free Relative ◽  
Syntactic Context

This chapter surveys headless relative clauses (i.e. ones with no overt head noun) in Yucatec Maya, an indigenous language of southern Mexico. For Indo-European languages, discussion of such constructions has focused on “free relative clauses”—those with only a bare wh-word in place of a head—and to a lesser extent, “light-headed” relative clauses⎯those with a dedicated set of pronominal elements in place of a head noun. In contrast, Yucatec Maya is shown to allow for four different kinds of surface headless relative clause forms depending on the presence or absence of a wh-word and the presence or absence of a determiner, quantifier, or other D-element. With respect to free relative clauses, whereas many more well-studied Indo-European languages have morpho-syntactically distinct constructions for definite and indefinite free relative clauses (e.g. with an infinitive or subjunctive form in the latter case), Yucatec Maya is shown to have a single morpho-syntactic form whose (in)definiteness is determined by syntactic context.

On the syntactic differences between OE dialects: evidence from the Gospels

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
CRISTINA SUÁREZ-GÓMEZ
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
English Language ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
The West ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Syntactic Differences ◽  
Early English

Old English has traditionally been considered a period of linguistic homogeneity, since most available recorded texts are generally written in the West Saxon dialect. There are, however, isolated texts which have been ascribed to other varieties, in particular Northumbrian and Mercian. In fact, recent research on syntactic dialectology in early English (Kroch & Taylor 1997; Ogura 1999; Hogg 2004, 2006a; Ingham 2006) shows that linguistic variation has been present in the English language from the earliest times. This study reassesses the existence of variation in the syntax of texts belonging to different dialectal varieties in Old English, in particular in relative constructions. Based on an analysis of relative clauses in three versions of the Gospels from late Old English, representing West Saxon, Northumbrian and Mercian dialects, we will observe differences in the texts, regarding both the paradigm of relativizers and the position adopted by the relative clause within the main clause. I relate these differences to the existence of linguistic differences in northern and southern dialects.

Relative Clauses in English conversation

2007 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara A. Fox ◽  
Sandra A. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Frequency Effects ◽  
English Relative Clauses

This paper is a usage-based study of the grammar of that set of English Relative Clauses with which a relativizer has been described as optional. We argue that the regularities in the use of relativizers in English can be seen as systematically arising from pragmatic-prosodic factors, creating frequency effects, resulting in some cases highly grammaticized formats: the more the Main Clause and the Relative Clause are integrated with each other, that is, approach monoclausal status, the more likely we are to find no relativizer used; conversely, the more separate the two clauses are, the more likely we are to find an overt relativizer. These findings have led us to suggest that the more monoclausal combinations have become unitary storage and processing chunks. We thus see these findings as a contribution not only to our understanding of Relative Clauses, but to our understanding of syntactic organization in general and of the nature of the grammatical practices in which speakers engage in everyday interactions.

Asymmetries in children's production of relative clauses: data from English and Korean

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 1038-1071 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHAE-EUN KIM ◽  
WILLIAM O'GRADY
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Indirect Object ◽  
Object Relative

ABSTRACTWe report here on a series of elicited production experiments that investigate the production of indirect object and oblique relative clauses by monolingual child learners of English and Korean. Taken together, the results from the two languages point toward a pair of robust asymmetries: children manifest a preference for subject relative clauses over indirect object relative clauses, and for direct object relative clauses over oblique relative clauses. We consider various possible explanations for these preferences, of which the most promising seems to involve the requirement that the referent of the head noun be easily construed as what the relative clause is about.

scholarly journals Internally-Headed Relative Clauses in Hakha Chin

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefon M Flego
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Indirect Object ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Embedded Clause

Hakha Chin, an underdocumented Tibeto-Burman language, is reported to have internally-headed relative clauses (IHRCs), a typologically rare syntactic structure in which the head noun phrase surfaces within the relative clause itself. The current study provides new data and novel observations which bear on several outstanding questions about IHRCs in this language: 1) Relativization of locative and instrumental adjuncts in IHRCs is avoided. 2) Conflicting stem allomorph requirements of negation and relativization of non-subjects give rise to optionality in stem choice when the two are brought together in an IHRC. 3) To relativize an indirect object, an IHRC is either avoided altogether, or the noun phrase is fronted to the absolute left-most position in the embedded clause. 4) Relativization of NPs with a human referent in an IHRC exhibit relativizer gender agreement, which has not been previously reported for this clause type in Hakha Chin.

Anaphor reconstruction in Japanese relative clauses

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yunchuan Chen
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
Binding Analysis ◽  
Truth Value

Abstract This study conducted two experiments to examine the derivation of the head noun phrase in Japanese relative clauses, with a focus on whether the anaphors jibun ‘self’ and jibun-jishin ‘self-self’ within the head noun phrase can be co-referential with the relative clause subject. It aims to settle a long-standing debate among the previous studies concerning the interpretation of the anaphors inside the head noun phrase: while several studies claimed that the co-reference between the anaphor jibun ‘self’ and the relative clause subject is prohibited, many other studies argued that such co-reference is possible. In addition, it has been claimed that while co-indexing the anaphor jibun with the relative clause subject might be marginally acceptable, it would become fully acceptable if we replace jibun with the morphologically complex anaphor jibun-jishin ‘self-self’, which implies that the morphological make-up of an anaphor may affect its ability to be co-indexed with the relative clause subject. The results of two carefully controlled truth value judgment experiments show that neither the simplex anaphor jibun nor the complex anaphor jibun-jishin within the head noun phrase of relative clauses can take the relative clause subject as its antecedent, which suggests that the head noun phrase does not reconstruct and therefore lends support to the pro-binding analysis of Japanese relative clauses. Moreover, the findings also suggest that the morphological make-up of an anaphor does not affect its ability to take the relative clause subject as its antecedent, despite the claim that it is more acceptable to co-index the complex anaphor jibun-jishin with the relative clause subject than the simplex anaphor jibun.

Discontinuous noun phrases and remnant-internal relativization in the diachrony of Portuguese

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriana Cardoso
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Clause Structure ◽  
Contrastive Focus ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Internal Position

This chapter investigates syntactic change regarding the availability of split noun phrases in relative clauses in the diachrony of Portuguese. In earlier stages of the language an element that is thematically dependent on the head noun (either as a complement or as a modifier) may not appear adjacent to it but in a relative clause internal position. In Contemporary European Portuguese, noun phrase discontinuity also arises in relative clauses, but only with the modifier/complement in the rightmost position. The word order with the modifier/complement at the left periphery of the relative clause is not allowed. The change is explained as being due to the loss of a left-peripheral position for contrastive focus within relative clauses (and possibly other types of subordinate clauses). Hence, the contraction of clause structure and the concomitant loss of movement are taken to constrain the possibilities of phrasal discontinuity found in earlier periods.

Towards a unified analysis of Katcha nominal modifiers

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-160
Author(s):  
Darryl Turner
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Identical Distribution ◽  
Demonstrative Pronouns ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This paper presents a description and analysis of the syntax of nominal modifiers in Katcha. The three main types of nominal modifiers in Katcha, demonstratives, possessive noun phrases and relative clauses, all agree with their head noun in gender, are morphologically marked when their head noun is a peripheral argument of the verb, and can occur in ‘headless’ constructions where there is no overt head noun. In the latter case they have a pronominal interpretation. The paper argues that a unified account of all nominal modifiers can be provided by adopting two premises: firstly, the possessive and relative markers are allomorphs of the proximal demonstrative; secondly, demonstratives in Katcha are pronouns rather than determiners. All nominal modifiers can then be characterized as appositional phrases headed by demonstrative pronouns. This characterization allows the inclusion of the medial and distal pronouns into the system, explaining why they have a different form to all other nominal modifiers, but identical distribution. The final section adds cross-linguistic perspective by discussing the relationship between this analysis of Katcha and the notion of construct state, most familiar in Semitic, but which has been argued to be a concept appropriate to a number of African languages.

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