scholarly journals Notes on relative and correlative constructions in Gǝʿǝz

Aethiopica ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 177-191
Author(s):  
Olga Kapeliuk

ዘሞትነ  ንሕነ  ወዘነገሥነ  ንሕነ: The relative verb accompanied by its headnoun, forming a relative clause which functions as the equivalent of an adjective, is the normal construction in the Semitic languages. In Gǝʿǝz, however, it is the substantivized relative clause, in which the headnoun is missing, that is the most diversified in its function and probably statistically more frequent. These are the correlative clauses. They present some specific morpho-syntactic features; thus the feminine relative pronoun is not encountered in them and the number of the relative pronoun is consistently accorded with the putative headnoun. In the regular relative clauses the headnoun is a noun or an independent pronoun but also suffixed pronouns and whole sentences may be qualified by a relative clause. Nominal sentences are common as relative or correlative clauses. In case the predicate of the nominal clause is a substantive, a pronoun with copulative function is introduced preventing the confusion between the construction in question and a possessive complex with nota genetivi.

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):


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.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (9) ◽  
pp. 26-40
Author(s):  
Jadwiga Linde-Usiekniewicz

troduced by a special relator który to, which in sentences bearing such clauses obligatorily agrees with the internal head. Such clauses have been hitherto overlooked in most syntactic descriptions of Polish. The inquiry is based on 291 citations obtained from the National Corpus of Polish, analysed for their semantic and syntactic features. The results show that double-headed relative clauses in Polish are marked as explicitly non-restrictive (as opposed to standard relative clauses). While identical internal and external heads need to be separated by a phrase governed by the external head, there is no such constraint on nonidentical internal heads. These may have not only nominal, but also clausal antecedents. In addition, non-identity of internal and external heads allows an introduction of subjective valuation (in the internal head) and a switch from object language to metalanguage or vice versa between the governing clause and the relative clause.


Author(s):  
Claudine Chamoreau

The aim of this study is to describe the two main kinds of headless relative clauses that are attested in Pesh, a Chibchan language spoken in Honduras: free relative clauses, which use a wh-word that functions as a relative pronoun at their left edge and a subordinator at their right edge, and headless relative clauses, which lack a wh- word but show a case marker or the topic marker at the right edge of the clause. The first type is less frequently attested in the natural corpus this study relies on, although the corpus does contain various instances of maximal, existential, and free-choice free relative clauses. Each of the constructions is distinguished by features of the wh-word and/or by certain restrictions regarding the tense of the verb in headless relative clauses or the type of verb in matrix clauses. The second type of headless relative clause, the ones that do not use a wh-expression, are much more frequent in the corpus and behave like headed relative clauses that lack a wh-expression. They are like noun phrases marked by a phrase-final case marker or the topic maker. The case or topic markers are used for light-headed relative clauses and for almost all types of maximal headless relative clause that have neither a light head nor a wh-expression, in contrast to maximal free relatives, in which only locative wh-words occur.


1972 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 497-513 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hailu Fulass

In what follows I would like to discuss the structure of Amharic relative clauses. In the course of the discussion, I would like to make the following three claims which I will attempt to substantiate in turn. First, I believe that relativization is a kind of pronominalization and, consequently, the particle yä- that is attached to the main verb (or its auxiliary) of the relative clause is not a relative pronoun. Second, I maintain that the ‘yä- clause’ in subject position in Amharic cleft sentences is also a relative clause with an unspecified element as its head. My third claim is that Amharic genitive phrases originate from relative clauses and that the noun (phrase) in the genitive phrase to which the particle yä- is attached in surface structure is governed by a preposition in underlying structure, and the head of a genitive phrase is the head of the under-lying relative clause. In this connexion, I also argue that there is a rule in Amharic which moves the particle yä- (to the right) over, at least, one constituent.


2010 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 227-242
Author(s):  
Sabine Zerbian

The morpho-syntax of relative clauses in Sotho-Tswana is relatively well-described in the literature. Prosodic characteristics, such as tone, have received far less attention in the existing descriptions. After reviewing the basic morpho-syntactic and semantic features of relative clauses in Tswana, the current paper sets out to present and discuss prosodic aspects. These comprise tone specifications of relative clause markers such as the demonstrative pronoun that acts as the relative pronoun, relative agreement concords and the relative suffix. Further prosodic aspects dealt with in the current article are tone alternations at the juncture of relative pronoun and head noun, and finally the tone patterns of the finite verbs in the relative clause. The article aims at providing the descriptive basis from which to arrive at generalizations concerning the prosodic phrasing of relative clauses in Tswana.  


2019 ◽  
pp. 209-229
Author(s):  
Irma Kaltak

The terms relative clause and relative pronoun are very often present and described in various ways in linguistic books. These descriptions mainly contain only basic indications for understanding the terms, while various doubts and imperfections occur due to which the problem itself has intrigued a large number of linguists. This paper will review the basic characteristics of relative clauses, with an analysis of it in Bosnia, Croatian and Serbian language. The nature of relative clauses introduced with the relative pronoun who (which, that), antecedents which occur with the relative pronoun who (which, that), and syntactic-semantic features of these relative clauses are observed. The goal of the research is to distinguish the types of relative clause introduced with relative pronoun who (which, that) in translations of Quran. The empirical and statistical analyses of relative clauses in this paper were based upon a corpus of several thousand relative clauses from two translations of Quran: first one by Besim Korkut (the 1977 “El-Kalem” edition) and second one by Esad Durakovic (the 2004 “Svjetlost” edition). The relative pronoun who (which, that) in Korkut’s translation introduces 49,8% (2752 clauses) out of 5538 relative clauses, while the same relative pronoun introduces 40% (2192 clauses) clauses out of 5414 relative clauses in Durakovic’s translation.


Author(s):  
Enrique L. Palancar ◽  
Leonardo Carranza Martínez

In this chapter, a rich array of headless relative clauses in Matlatzinca (Atzincan, Oto-Pamean, Oto-Manguean; Mexico) is presented, mainly based on the patterns found in a corpus of natural data from spontaneous narratives and conversations by fluent native speakers. While free relative clauses are attested in the language, by far the most common type of headless relative clause is an asyndetic clause, i.e., a clause with no complementizer or relative pronoun. Maximal and existential free relative clauses are only found with the wh- words for ‘who,’ ‘what,’ and ‘where,’ but free-choice free relative clauses apparently also allow for the wh-word for ‘how much.’


Author(s):  
Janjira Kongsakorn ◽  
Prommintra Kongkaew

The present work aimed to analyze complex sentences and study the types of the complex sentences as used in the selected Thai political news stories from online Bangkok Post. Four Thai political news stories were selected for the study. They were the news stories published in April 2016. The news stories were analyzed based on the following types: Adverbial clauses, relative clauses and nominal clauses. The study found that the complex sentence type which was used with the highest frequency was a nominal clause. It accounted for 44 %. The type of the complex sentence; which was ranked second in use was an adverbial clause. It accounted for 29%. The type of the complex sentences which was least used was a relative clause. It represents 27 %.


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