scholarly journals Verbless Relative Clauses in Gǝʿǝz and their Equivalents in Amharic and Tigrinya

Aethiopica ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 143-154
Author(s):  
Olga Kapeliuk

The most frequent and most typical relative clauses in Gǝʿǝz have a verbal predicate, but also nominal, or in other terms verbless, sentences may be relativized. Since Gǝʿǝz has no copula, nominal sentences are composed of the subject and of the predicative complement of a zero copula only. Considering that in sentences with relative clauses the headnoun stands outside the relative clause, all that is left in the latter is the relative pronoun and what acts as the predicative complement. Hence the nominal relative clauses have a much reduced structure and may be interpreted wrongly as one-member sentences.

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gualtiero Calboli

AbstractI started from the relative clause which occurs in Hittite, and in particular with the enclitic position of the relative pronoun. This is connected with the OV position and this position seems to have been prevailing in Hittite and PIE. The syntactic structure usually employed in Hittite between different clauses is the parataxis. Nevertheless, also the hypotaxis begins to be employed and the best occasion to use it was the diptych as suggested by Haudry, though he didn't consider the most natural and usual diptych: the law, where the crime and the sanction build a natural diptych already in old Hittite. Then I used Justus' and Boley's discussion on the structure of Hittite sentence and found a similarity with Latin, namely the use of an animate subject as central point of a sentence. With verbs of action in ancient languages the subject was normally an animate being, whereas also inanimate subject is employed in modern languages. This seems to be the major difference between ancient and modern structure of a sentence, or, better to say, in Hittite and PIE the subject was an animate being and this persisted a long time, and remained as a tendency in Latin, while in following languages and in classical grammar the subject became a simple nominal “entity” to be predicated and precised with verb and other linguistic instruments. A glance has been cast also to pronouns and particles (sometimes linked together) as instruments of linking nominal variants of coordinate or subordinate clauses and to the development of demonstrative/deictic pronouns. Also in ancient case theory a prevailing position was assured to the nominative case, the case of the subject.


Author(s):  
Anggun Melati Sari ◽  
Andayani Andayani ◽  
Sumarlam Sumarlam

Anggun Melati Sari1, Andayani2, Sumarlam31Universitas Sebelas Maret [email protected] 2Universitas Sebelas Maret [email protected] 3Universitas Sebelas Maret [email protected]  AbstractThis study aimed to describe the use of relative clauses Indonesian learners for Foreign Speakers (BIPA) grade-level academic scholarship at the Technical Implementation Unit (UPT) Language of Sebelas Maret University. The subject matter is the form of the use of relative clauses and the types of errors in relative clause. The data used in this study is the form of oral’s data and writing’s data. The data derived from the oral-speech BIPA’s learners in which there is relative clause while the writing’s data derived from the sentences in BIPA learner’s essay in which there is relative clause. The data were analyzed using agih methods and advanced technique of agih methods. The results of this study indicate that the use of relative clauses in BIPA learners using the perelative words “yang”. Acquisition of the relative clauses that relativize the thermic elements and errors in the relative clause that removes the noun element occupying the highest level as well as describe the highest degree of mastery in relative clauses. This study concluded that the form of the use of relative clause also describe the mastery level of difficulty of each type of relative clause learners BIPA.Keywords: clause, relative clause, Indonesian for foreign speakers (BIPA)


Author(s):  
Gary D. Prideaux

Over the past several years, a considerable amount of research on language comprehension has been carried out under the assumption that comprehension crucially involves language-independent cognitive strategies interacting with grammatical properties specific to a given language. Accordingly, the two factors of grammatical structure and cognitive strategies interact to render certain structures relatively more difficult to process than others. For example, it has been suggested that centre-embedded structures are more difficult to process than right-branching structures because centre-embedding interrupts the main clause and imposes a burden on short term memory, thereby making it relatively more difficult for the hearer to obtain closure on the entire sentence (Kuno 1974). Much attention within the cognitive strategies paradigm has been addressed to the comprehension of English complex sentences, and in particular to those sentences containing relative clauses. Since English permits relative clauses to be attached to NPs playing almost any grammatical role, and since, within a relative clause, the relativized NP can itself play almost any role, sentences containing relative clauses have provided a useful arena for testing various proposed cognitive strategies insofar as they relate to complex structures. In particular, much research has been addressed to SVO sentences in which a relative clause is formed on either the subject or object NP, and in which the relative pronoun is either subject or object.


2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Qiang ◽  
Guo Xiaoyu ◽  
Yao Yiru ◽  
Nicole Müller

AbstractIt has been debated whether preference for subject-extracted relative clauses in language processing is a universal rule, with evidence from both first and second language acquisition studies. But very few studies focus on learners of Chinese as a second language. The current research studied Chinese subject/object-extracted relative clauses processing among the learners of Chinese as a second language by a self-paced reading experiment. The results demonstrate a faster and more accurate processing of subject-extracted relative clauses in both subject and object modifying conditions, adding more evidence to the universal preference for the subject-extracted relative clauses. Both Frequency-Based Accounts and Memory-Based Accounts are discussed related to the current findings.


2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Sameer Statiyyeh ◽  
Halah Al Abooshi

This research aims at defining the concept of the sentence, its components, and types according to the Omani scholar Abdullah bin Humaid Al-Salimi (1913). Like most Arab grammarians, Al-Salimi concentrated on the syntactic level of the sentence without denying the semantic aspect. Al-Salimi adopted the traditional grammatical concept of the sentence. According to Arab grammarians, the sentence is the minimum structure that makes sense. It consists of two main factors: the subject and object. This concept makes problems when applied to the relative clause and the first part of the conditional clause. Both conditional and relative clauses consist of two elements, i.e. subject and object but they do not make complete meaning. Like traditional grammarians, Al-Salimi divided the sentence according to initiation and implication. Initiation is when the sentence starts with a noun, then it will be classified as a nominal sentence; otherwise it will be considered a verbal sentence. Implication is when the small sentence is implied in the big sentence. This research arrived at some findings which include the following results: 1-Al-Salimi was a traditional grammarian but he had some innovative ideas. 2-Al-Salimi’s approach can be considered structural, but one that does not ignore semantic considerations. 3-The sentence classification in Salimi’s work is built on syntactic principles. 


2020 ◽  
pp. 026765832095874
Author(s):  
Vera Yunxiao Xia ◽  
Lydia White ◽  
Natália Brambatti Guzzo

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.


1990 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nigel Fabb

A nonrestrictive relative clause (henceforth NRR) is shown in (I) and a restrictive relative clause (henceforth RR) in (2).(1) The swans, which are white, are in that part of the lake.(2) The swans which are white are in that part of the lake.Example (1) implies that all the swans under discussion are white. Example (2) implies that the white swans are being distinguished from some other not white swans which are also under discussion. There are many superficial differences between restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses; in this paper I show that there is no need for construction-specific stipulations which distinguish between them. The differences arise from the fact that the RR is a modifier, while the NRR is not, and in fact has no syntactic relation to its host/antecedent. Co-indexing (involving a referential index) between the relative clause and its antecedent is central to this account. I examine the requirement that a relative pronoun must have an antecedent, which in the case of a NRR is the sole manifestation of the relationship between the relative clause and its host), and suggest that this holds at a level of discourse structure.


1980 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Joseph

Modern Greek has a Relative Clause Formation process by which the target of Relativization is deleted under identity with the head of the Relative Clause – these Relative Clauses are introduced by the invariant complementizer particle pu, which also introduces factive complements. (Greek also has a movement strategy for Relative Clauses, with an inflected Relative pronoun, but the details of this process are irrelevant here.) Examples of the deletion strategy are given below in (i):


2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 615-637 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark L. O. Van de Velde ◽  
Odette Ambouroue

Abstract This paper provides an analysis of two relative clause constructions in the Gabonese Bantu language Orungu that are in complementary distribution. The choice between them is determined by the target of relativisation in a typologically interesting way, in that it involves the combination of the criteria of the syntactic relation, thematic role and referential properties of the target. The construction that targets most types of objects is formally nearly identical to relative clauses that target the subject of a passive clause and we argue that it originates in the syntactic reanalysis of such subject relatives. That is, relative clauses that targeted the subject of a passive clause have been reanalysed as relative clauses that target the object of an active clause. This shows a rare type of change in relative clause constructions, which is unique in Bantu, but grounded in the universal tendencies captured by the accessibility hierarchy.


1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 389-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill De Villiers ◽  
Thomas Roeper

ABSTRACTTwo studies are described which investigate preschool children's sensitivity to relative clauses as barriers to the movement of wh-questions. The children were presented with short stories followed by questions in which the wh-word had two possible sites of interpretation, the ungrammatical option being inside a relative clause. A cross-sectional study with 23 children aged 3;1 to 6;1, and a longitudinal study over the course of one year with 12 children aged 3;1 to 4;1 at the start, found young children refused to extract wh-questions from the ungrammatical site inside a relative clause. This confirms other findings that children's early grammars are sensitive to universal constraints on movement. In addition, the children differentiated between wh-complements and relative clauses in their tendency to mistakenly answer the medial wh-complementizer but not the wh-relative pronoun. Explanations for the latter are framed in terms of children's initial assumptions about the attachment of complements.


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