Chapter 5. The diachrony of relative clauses: Syntactic complexity in the noun phrase

2009 ◽  
pp. 97-120
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Syntactic Complexity

The relative verb forms of Cuwabo (Bantu P34) as contextually oriented participles

Linguistics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 463-491
Author(s):  
Rozenn Guérois ◽  
Denis Creissels
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Bantu Languages ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
The Subject ◽  
North Western

AbstractCuwabo (Bantu P34, Mozambique) illustrates a relativization strategy, also attested in some North-Western and Central Bantu languages, whose most salient characteristics are that: (a) the initial agreement slot of the verb form does not express agreement with the subject (as in independent clauses), but agreement with the head noun; (b) the initial agreement slot of the verb form does not express agreement in person and number-gender (or class), but only in number-gender; (c) when a noun phrase other than the subject is relativized, the noun phrase encoded as the subject in the corresponding independent clause occurs in post-verbal position and does not control any agreement mechanism. In this article, we show that, in spite of the similarity between the relative verb forms of Cuwabo and the corresponding independent verb forms, and the impossibility of isolating a morphological element analyzable as a participial formative, the relative verb forms of Cuwabo are participles, with the following two particularities: they exhibit full contextual orientation, and they assign a specific grammatical role to the initial subject, whose encoding in relative clauses coincides neither with that of subjects of independent verb forms, nor with that of adnominal possessors.

scholarly journals The syntactic complexity of Russian relative clauses

2013 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-495 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Levy ◽  
Evelina Fedorenko ◽  
Edward Gibson
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Syntactic Complexity

Syntactic Complexity in Spanish Narratives

1994 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 645-654 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera F. Gutierrez-Clellen ◽  
Richard Hofstetter
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Developmental Differences ◽  
Spanish Language ◽  
School Age ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Structural Constituent ◽  
Prepositional Phrases ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
Language Groups ◽  
Nominal Clauses

Syntactic complexity in the movie retellings of 77 school-age Spanish-speaking children was examined using a structural constituent analysis. The results demonstrated developmental differences in the length of T-units, index of subordination, use of relative clauses, and prepositional phrases. There were also differences in the length of T-units, use of nominal clauses, and adverbial phrases across Spanish language groups. The analysis underscores the significance of subordination as a cohesive device and as an indicator of narrative proficiency.

Free relative clauses in Yucatec Maya

2013 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Gutiérrez-Bravo
Keyword(s):  
Structural Properties ◽  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Yucatan Peninsula ◽  
Prepositional Phrase ◽  
Yucatec Maya ◽  
Relative Pronoun ◽  
Free Relatives ◽  
Free Relative ◽  
Unified Description

AbstractThis paper presents an analysis and description of the syntax of free relative clauses in Yucatec Maya, the Mayan language spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. The description and analysis focus on two structural properties of these free relative clauses; a) the internal nature of the relative pronoun, and, b) the absence of matching effects observed in Yucatec free relatives when a prepositional phrase is relativized. I show that these two phenomena receive a unified description in an analysis where Yucatec, in contrast with a language like English, allows the head of the noun phrase to be null.

scholarly journals High Vs Low: Turkish Parser’s Attachment Preferences to Relative Clauses

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-270
Author(s):  
Cengiz TURAN
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Semantic Information ◽  
Eye Tracker ◽  
General Direction ◽  
Online Processing ◽  
Fixation Durations ◽  
Structural Ambiguity ◽  
Early Processing ◽  
Main Verb

The present study investigates parsing preferences to Turkish relative clauses (RC) using eye-tracker method and comprehension questions presented to the participants following each experimental sentences. In this framework, the possible effects of the RC on attachment types (low – high) were analyzed. The data gathered from a total of sixty participants were considered. Twenty-eight experimental sentences were developed based on RC and two attachment types thus, testing four conditions along with twenty-eight filler sentences. General direction of processing is that the high attachment (HA) configuration caused slightly less cognitive load than the low attachment (LA). Nevertheless, reading times belonging to HA sentences statistically longer on NP2 (the second noun phrase following the RC area). Longer fixation durations on main verbs were observed with significant differences in LA sentences. Regarding the answers to the comprehension questions, the data complement the findings from online processing. It  can be stated that Turkish parser prioritizes syntactic operations during the early processing. However, lexical-semantic information of the main verb  overrides these operations in the event of a structural ambiguity. Processing of HA sentences is more rapid than the LA sentences. Overall, Turkish is suggested to be a HA language.

scholarly journals Relativization Strategies of Sasak Ngeno Ngene Dialect in Lombok

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-21
Author(s):  
Nurachman Hanafi ◽  
Udin Udin ◽  
Eni Djuhaeni ◽  
Edy Syahrial
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Careful Analysis ◽  
Typological Approach ◽  
Coding Strategy ◽  
The Right

Relative clauses (RC), in whatever the languages, are essential for investigation especially on how noun phrases as nuclear and oblique relations are workable in Keenan & Comrie’s (1977) Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy. In this paper, Relativization Strategies of Sasak Ngeno-Ngene Dialect in Lombok is presented with the aims are (1) describing the ability of these relations in direct relativization, (2) analyzing the strategies used when indirect relativization occurs, and (3) formulating the right orderings of these relations in the hierarchy. The data on relativization strategies were taken by elicitations, an interview with some informants and documentation of the previous related studies. Then, a careful analysis was made with reference to common linguistic typological approach. The results of this study showed that: (1) gap strategy underlines direct relativization for S (subject) of SVO, O (object) of OVS and OBL of destination, (2) case-coding strategy is preferred by OBL of locative, and (3) passivization strategy is suitable for all indirect relativizations for O (object) of SVO and OBL of benefactive, recipient, and instrumental. The hierarchy of nuclear and oblique relations were formulated: S (SVO) > O (OVS) > OBL (DES > LOC) in direct relativization. Conversely, the hierarchy of O (SVO) > OBL (BEN > RECIP > INST) is shown in indirect relativization.

scholarly journals Nouns and noun phrase structure in Nubri

Gipan ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 38-53
Author(s):  
Dubi Nanda Dhakal
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Preliminary Investigation ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Nominal Morphology

This paper is a preliminary investigation of the nominal morphology and noun phrase structures of Nubri, a Tibetan variety spoken in the northern Gorkha. Nubri shares a number of inflectional and derivational features with Tibetan languages, such as Kyirong Tibetan. Like its close Tibetan varieties, a number of modifiers such as, genitive-marked nouns, demonstratives, relative clauses etc. precede the head nouns, whereas some other modifiers, such as article, emphatic marker, numerals etc. follow them in the noun phrase.

The correspondence between sentence production and corpus frequencies in modifier attachment

2002 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 879-896 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Desmet ◽  
Marc Brysbaert ◽  
Constantijn De Baecke
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Sentence Production ◽  
Syntactic Ambiguity ◽  
Attachment Preference ◽  
Attachment Sites ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Relative Clause Attachment

We examined the production of relative clauses in sentences with a complex noun phrase containing two possible attachment sites for the relative clause (e.g., “Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony.”). On the basis of two corpus analyses and two sentence continuation tasks, we conclude that much research about this specific syntactic ambiguity has used complex noun phrases that are quite uncommon. These noun phrases involve the relationship between two humans and, at least in Dutch, induce a different attachment preference from noun phrases referring to non-human entities. We provide evidence that the use of this type of complex noun phrase may have distorted the conclusions about the processes underlying relative clause attachment. In addition, it is shown that, notwithstanding some notable differences between sentence production in the continuation task and in coherent text writing, there seems to be a remarkable correspondence between the attachment patterns obtained with both modes of production.

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