scholarly journals On the correlative nature of Hungarian left-peripheral relatives

2004 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-313
Author(s):  
Anikó Lipták
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Distributional Properties ◽  
The Right

This paper takes a close look at the properties of Hungarian relative clauses that occur in the left periphery of the main clause, preceding a (pro)nominal associate. It will be shown that these left-peripheral relative clauses differ in many ways from relative clauses dislocated on the right periphery, as well as from relative clauses embedded under a (pro)nominal head. To capture the precise syntax of these left-peripheral clauses, these will be compared to ordinary left-dislocated items, with which they have some properties in common. Despite the surface similarities between the two, however, there are a few decisive aspects of behaviour, most notably, distributional properties and connectivity effects, which argue against taking left-peripheral relatives as cases of clausal left-dislocates in Hungarian. Instead, one is led to consider these as correlative clauses, on the basis of the properties they share with well-established correlatives in languages like Hindi.  

scholarly journals The Influence of English on the History of Hindi Relative Clauses

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 250-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vandana Puri
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Occasional Occurrence ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right ◽  
English I

AbstractThe influence of Hindi on English has been well documented; however, little has been said about the influence of English on the structure of Hindi. In this paper I provide evidence that Hindi “embedded” (i.e. post-nominal) relative clauses result from English influence. Hindi originally had Relative-Correlative (RC-CC) constructions that could adjoin to the left or the right of the main clause. Since evidence from early Hindi is limited, I draw on Awadhi and Braj Bhakha to provide greater time depth for the earlier history of Hindi. In addition I examine early 19 th century grammars and texts. None of these provide unambiguous evidence for embedded relative clauses. By contrast, late 19 th century and early 20 th century Hindi texts translated from English exhibit many instances of central embedded relative clauses (besides the old adjoined relativecorrelatives), thus supporting the argument that Hindi embedded relative clauses result from the influence of English. I argue that what may have helped in this developed is the occasional occurrence of potentially ambiguous structures in earlier Hindi, which could be reinterpreted as involving embedding, rather than a relative-correlative construction with deleted correlative pronoun.

Remnant-internal relativization

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriana Cardoso
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Peripheral Position ◽  
Specific Configuration ◽  
The Right

Chapter 2 investigates a specific configuration (dubbed “remnant-internal relativization”) in which the head noun and some modifier/complement related to it appear discontinuously (as in the so-called split or discontinuous noun phrases). It is argued that the analysis of remnant-internal relativization is of particular interest from the theoretical and diachronic point of view. Theoretically it can illuminate the long-standing debate between the right adjunction and the head raising analyses of RRCs, providing evidence in favor of the latter. From a diachronic perspective, it is argued that the loss of remnant-internal relativization with the modifier/complement in the left periphery of the Portuguese relative clauses might be due to a restriction on movement that emerges inside the DP, which blocks the extraction of the modifier/complement to a left peripheral position.

Clause Structure and Word Order in the History of German

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Clause Structure ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Right ◽  
Theoretical Analyses

Over roughly the last decade, there has been a notable rise in new research on historical German syntax in a generative perspective. This volume presents a state-of-the-art survey of this thriving new line of research by leading scholars in the field, combining it with new insights into the syntax of historical German. It is the first comprehensive and concise generative historical syntax of German covering numerous central aspects of clause structure and word order, tracing them throughout various historical stages. Each chapter combines a solid empirical basis and valid descriptive generalizations with reference also to the more traditional topological model of the German clause with a detailed discussion of theoretical analyses couched in the generative framework. The volume is divided into three parts according to the main parts of the clause: the left periphery dealing with verbal placement and the filling of the prefield (verb second, verb first, verb third orders) as well as adverbial connectives; the middle field including discussion of pronominal syntax, order of full NPs and the history of negation; and the right periphery with chapters on basic word order (OV/VO), prosodic and information-structural factors, and the verbal complex including the development of periphrastic verb forms and the phenomena of IPP (infinitivus pro participio) and ACI (accusativus cum infinitivo). This book thus provides a convenient overview of current research on the major issues concerning historical German clause structure both for scholars interested in more traditional description and for those interested in formal accounts of diachronic syntax.

scholarly journals French adverbial clauses, rescue by ellipsis and the truncation versus intervention debate

Probus ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
J.-Marc Authier ◽  
Liliane Haegeman
Keyword(s):  
Main Clause ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Empirical Basis ◽  
Relativized Minimality ◽  
Adverbial Clauses

AbstractThis paper investigates the restrictions on movement to the left periphery found in non-root environments such as French central adverbial clauses and argues that an analysis of main clause phenomena based on intervention/Relativized Minimality is to be preferred to one based on structural truncation. The empirical basis for this claim consists of an examination of some asymmetries between French infinitival TP ellipsis and infinitival TP Topicalization. Adopting Authie's (2011) approach to TP ellipsis whereby the to-be-elided TP undergoes fronting in the computational component but fails to be spelled out at PF, we argue that these asymmetries follow from the fact that in French, while a spelled out fronted TP is an intervener for

scholarly journals Right-dislocation in Catalan: Its discourse function and counterparts in English

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laia Mayol
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Content ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
English Text ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Discourse Function ◽  
Structure Information ◽  
Information Packaging ◽  
Canonical Order ◽  
The Right ◽  
Previous Sentence

This paper presents a corpus study of right dislocation (RD) in Catalan and discusses crosslinguistic differences of information packaging between English and Catalan. The Catalan corpus consists of 93 RDs which have been coded according to three parameters: (1) the point where the entity in the right-dislocated constituent had appeared in the discourse, (2) consequences of eliminating the right-dislocated constituent and (3) consequences of restoring the canonical order. I argue that RD in Catalan is a means to structure information in a coherent way by displacing old information from the main clause. Three main types of RDs can be found: (1) RDs which activate an entity which was no longer accessible in the discourse and make it highly salient, while still marking its discourse-old status; (2) RDs which make explicit an implicit, never textually mentioned, referent and places it in a discourse-old information position. (3) RDs referring to entities mentioned in the previous sentence. Such RDs convey an additional meaning, some ‘emotional content’, having to do with the expression of opposition or emphasis. In order to analyse crosslinguistic differences, an English text and its Catalan translation have been used. The Catalan translation contained 42 instances of RD, while the English text contained none, which shows that the two languages use different strategies to encode information packaging. The Catalan translation uses RDs mostly in cases in which the English original repeats the same phrase in two consecutive utterances and in utterances which convey contrast or opposition.

scholarly journals The Functions of Danish Causal Conjunctions

Nordlyd ◽  
10.7557/12.14 ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rita Therkelsen
Keyword(s):  
Causal Relationship ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
Functional Grammar ◽  
Distributional Properties

In the article I propose an analysis of the Danish causal conjunctions <em>fordi, siden</em> and <em>for</em> based on the framework of Danish Functional Grammar. As conjunctions they relate two clauses, and their semantics have in common that it indicates a causal relationship between the clauses. The causal conjunctions are different as far as their distribution is concerned; <em>siden</em> conjoins a subordinate clause and a main clause, <em>for</em> conjoins two main clauses, and <em>fordi</em> is able to do both. Methodologically I have based my analysis on these distributional properties comparing <em>siden</em> and <em>fordi</em> conjoining a subordinate and a main clause, and comparing <em>for</em> and <em>fordi</em> conjoining two main clauses, following the thesis that they would establish a causal relationship between different kinds of content. My main findings are that <em>fordi</em> establishes a causal relationship between the events referred to by the two clauses, and the whole utterance functions as a statement of this causal relationship. <em>Siden</em> presupposes such a general causal relationship between the two events and puts forward the causing event as a reason for assuming or wishing or ordering the caused event, <em>siden</em> thus establishes a causal relationship between an event and a speech act. <em>For</em> equally presupposes a general causal relationship between two events and it establishes a causal relationship between speech acts, and <em>fordi</em> conjoining two main clauses is able to do this too, but in this position it also maintains its event-relating ability, the interpretation depending on contextual factors.

Subordinate clauses

2019 ◽  
pp. 237-288
Author(s):  
Jan Terje Faarlund
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Matrix Clause ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Infinitival Clauses ◽  
Finite Verb ◽  
Nominal Clauses

In subordinate clauses, the C position is occupied by a complementizer word, which may be null. The finite verb stays in V. SpecCP is either empty or occupied by a wh-word, or by some other element indicating its semantic function. Nominal clauses are finite or non-finite. Finite nominal clauses are declarative or interrogative. Declarative nominal clauses may under specific circumstances have main clause word order (‘embedded V2’). Infinitival clauses are marked by an infinitive marker, which is either in C (Swedish), or immediately above V (Danish). Norwegian has both options. Relative clauses comprise several different types; clauses with a relativized nominal argument are mostly introduced by a complementizer; adverbial relative clauses relativize a locative or temporal phrase, with or without a complementizer; comparative clauses relativize a degree or identity. Under hard-to-define circumstances depending on language and region, subordinate clauses allow extraction of phrases up into the matrix clause.

Sulawesi Relatives, V-Raising, and the CP-Complement Hypothesis

1998 ◽  
Vol 43 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 283-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel L. Finer
Keyword(s):  
Head Movement ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Austronesian Languages ◽  
The Right

AbstractDPs in several Austronesian languages from southwestern Sulawesi show the D head as an enclitic on an element within the DP. Where N is unmodified, D cliticizes to N, and where D is modified, D cliticizes to the modifier. A structure in which NP and the modifying phrase are treated as arguments of D is proposed, and the cliticization pattern is analyzed as resulting from head movement. Depending on the valency of the DP, NP will either be specifier or complement of D. This analysis extends easily to account for some otherwise puzzling patterns shown in relative clauses where D cliticizes to the right periphery of the verb of the modifying CP. Under the minimalist hypotheses that overt movement is a function of feature strength and that the strength of the relevant features can vary from language to language, certain patterns of head-adjunction involving V, I, C, and D are expected and the predictions are discussed.

Concurrent models and cross-linguistic analogies in the study of prepositional stranding in French in Canada

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 226-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
RICARDO OTHEGUY
Keyword(s):  
Geographic Distribution ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Historical Source

Prepositions can be found with and without adjacent complements in many forms of popular spoken French. The alternation appears in main clauses (il veut pas payer pour ça ~ il veut pas payer pour “he doesn't want to pay for [it]”) and, though with a more restricted social and geographic distribution, in relative clauses (j'avais pas personne avec qui parler ~ j'avais pas personne à parler avec “I had no one to whom to talk ~ I had no one to talk to”). In main clauses, the variant lacking the adjacent complement is said to have an orphaned preposition (il veut pas payer pour); in relatives, it is said to have a stranded preposition (j'avais pas personne à parler avec). In popular spoken French in Canada, stranding appears to be much more frequent than in other Francophone areas. Because so many French speakers in Canada are bilingual, because of the high frequency of stranding, and no doubt also because stranding violates prescriptive norms, stranded prepositions in French in Canada are widely believed to be instances of English influence (e.g. j'avais pas personne à parler avec is regarded as modeled on I had no one to talk to). But in a masterly variationist treatment, Poplack, Zentz and Dion (2011, this issue) argue that Canadian stranding is not of English origin. Stranded Canadian prepositions represent, instead, the expansion to relative clauses of the ordinary main-clause orphans. The historical source for Canadian stranding is thus analogy-induced and internal (French orphans), not contact-induced and external (not English stranding).

Multiple final embedding of clauses

2010 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred Karlsson
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Successive Level ◽  
Complex Varieties ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Processing Mechanisms

There are no grammatical limits on multiple final embedding of clauses. But converging corpus data from English, Finnish, German and Swedish show that multiple final embedding is avoided at levels deeper than three levels from the main clause in syntactically simple varieties, and at levels deeper than five levels in complex varieties. The frequency of every successive level of final embedding decreases by a factor of seven down to levels 4–5. Only relative clauses allow free self-embedding, within the limits just mentioned. These restrictions are regularities of language use, stylistic preferences related to the properties of various types of discourse. Ultimately they are explained by cognitive and other properties of the language processing mechanisms. The frequencies of final embedding depths in modern languages such as English and Finnish is not accidental. Ancient Greek had reached this profile by 300 BC, suggesting cross-linguistic generality of the preferences.

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