scholarly journals Patterns of Relative Clauses in Dagbanli

SAGE Open ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 215824401769201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdul-Razak Inusah
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
The Other ◽  
Indefinite Pronoun

The article examines the patterns of relative clauses in Dagbanli, a Gur language spoken in northern part of Ghana. It focuses on a range of possible RC patterns, and presents a coherent classification using Vries’s model of RC types. The article argues that Dagbanli has two RC types which are characterized by shared features so “indefinite pronoun” that forms a compound with the nominal root, and maa or la “clause-final determiner.” The first RC type is restricted to cases in which the antecedent has subject function within the RC, and the other RC type occurs only with nonsubjects as relativized head making use of postsubjectival particle ni to mark subordinated clauses. It is proposed that Dagbanli has a postnominal word order of N . . . RC . . . D and allows D-type ([[Subj V Obj] D] RC) in-situ HIRC (Head Internal Relative Clause) as well HERC (Head External Relative Clause). It also presents ŋun “who” and ni “which” as question particles that are used to introduce relative clauses in Dagbanli.

The mechanism of inverted relativization in Japanese: A silent linker and inversion

2012 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
KEN HIRAIWA
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
The Other ◽  
Final Word ◽  
Left Edge ◽  
And Inversion ◽  
Order Pattern

Japanese has two peculiar types of relative clause (RC), No-RCs and De-RCs. In these types of relative clause, what looks like a (pivot) head noun appears at the left edge of the clause and is accompanied by no and de, respectively. This sharply contrasts with regular prenominal relative clauses in Japanese, which conform to the head-final word order pattern. The aim of this article is to investigate the syntax and semantics of these two types of relative clause in detail and reveal differences between them. Specifically, I will propose that (i) no in No-RCs is an appositive genitive particle licensed by a silent linker head, and (ii) de in De-RCs is a continuative/participial form of the copula da. Drawing a parallel with NP-no NP constructions and building on an idea from S.-Y. Kuroda's dissertation, it will be argued that No-RCs are derived by DP-internal inversion mediated by the linker. On the other hand, De-RCs will be shown to be relatives conjoined with the copula de. It will be further suggested that the fact that Korean and Mandarin Chinese lack equivalents of De-RCs is due to the absence of the appositive genitive particle and hence of DP-internal inversion.

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.

scholarly journals Relativiser Alternation and Relative Clause Complexity: Insights from Nigerian and American Varieties

2020 ◽  
pp. 91-113
Author(s):  
Mayowa Akinlotan
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
The Other ◽  
Construction Site ◽  
Simple Construction ◽  
Syntactic Form ◽  
Complex Versus ◽  
New Varieties ◽  
Syntactic Function ◽  
Independent Effects

Idiosyncrasies and peculiarities distinguishing new Englishes from the established ones are often identified and measured by examining the extent to which structural choices and patterns vary across the board. The competition between relativisers wh- and that in the construction of relative clause, which itself is a structurally complex-versus-simple construction site, allows for showing the extent to which choice of a relativiser relates to the construction of a complex or simple relative clause, given different factors. On the other hand, such investigation can also shed some light on the extent to which structural com- plexity characterises new varieties of English. Relying on 628 relative clauses drawn from written academic corpus, the study shows that WH-relativiser is preferred to THAT-relativiser by the Nigerian speakers, and vice versa by the American speakers. It is also found that WH-relative clause is more likely to be complex-structured while THAT-relative clause is more likely to be simple-structured. Among eight factors tested for independent effects, the factors representing relativiser posterior syntactic form, syntactic function, and syntactic positioning of the relative clause appeared to be strong predictors of where we might (not) find a certain relativiser and whether a complex or simple relative clause will emerge.

Turkish and the Southwestern Turkic (Oghuz) languages

2020 ◽  
pp. 392-410
Author(s):  
Jaklin Kornfilt
Keyword(s):  
Structural Properties ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Vowel Harmony ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Basic Word ◽  
Embedded Clauses ◽  
Modern Standard

The Southwestern (Oghuz) branch of Turkic consists of languages that are largely mutually intelligible, and are similar with respect to their structural properties. Because Turkish is the most prominent member of this branch with respect to number of speakers, and because it is the best-studied language in this group, this chapter describes modern standard Turkish as the representative of that branch and limits itself to describing Turkish. The morphology of Oghuz languages is agglutinative and suffixing; their phonology has vowel harmony for the features of backness and rounding; their basic word order is SOV, but most are quite free in their word order and are wh-in-situ languages; their relative clauses exhibit gaps corresponding to the clause-external head, and most embedded clauses are nominalized. Fully verbal embedded clauses are found, too. The lexicon, while largely Turkic, also has borrowings from Arabic, Persian, French, English, and Modern Greek and Italian.

scholarly journals REANALYSIS IN ADULT HERITAGE LANGUAGE

2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Polinsky
Keyword(s):  
Life Span ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Child Language ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
English Dominant

This study presents and analyzes the comprehension of relative clauses in child and adult speakers of Russian, comparing monolingual controls with Russian heritage speakers (HSs) who are English-dominant. Monolingual and bilingual children demonstrate full adultlike mastery of relative clauses. Adult HSs, however, are significantly different from the monolingual adult controls and from the child HS group. This divergent performance indicates that the adult heritage grammar is not a product of the fossilization of child language. Instead, it suggests that forms existing in the baseline undergo gradual attrition over the life span of a HS. This result is consistent with observations on narrative structure in child and adult HSs (Polinsky, 2008b). Evidence from word order facts suggests that relative clause reanalysis in adult HSs cannot be attributed to transfer from English.

scholarly journals Relative Clauses in Old High German: A Corpus-Based Statistical Investigation of Their Syntactic and Information-Structural Properties

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Coniglio ◽  
Sonja Linde ◽  
Tom Ruette
Keyword(s):  
Structural Properties ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Statistical Investigation ◽  
Relative Order ◽  
Old High German ◽  
Text Information ◽  
Place Of Origin ◽  
Striking Fact

In this paper, we investigate the properties of Old High German relative clauses. A striking fact is that the finite verb in these constructions may either precede or follow its object(s). We survey different possible factors proposed in the literature that could determine the relative order of the verb and its objects (VO/OV order), such as type, time, and place of origin of the text, information-structural properties of the object of the relative clause, presence of a relative particle, definiteness of the antecedent, specificity of the referent, and type of the relative clause (restrictive or appositive). Our investigation is based on a corpus of nontranslated texts. It reveals that the only factors that have statistically significant influence on word order are the type of the relative clause and some information-structural properties of the object of the relative clause.*

Headless Relative Clauses in Ch'ol

2021 ◽  
pp. 362-402
Author(s):  
Juan Jesús Vázquez Álvarez ◽  
Jessica Coon
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Southern Mexico ◽  
Free Relatives ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Free Relative ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Relative Structure

This chapter surveys headless relative clauses in Ch’ol, a Mayan language spoken in the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico. Ch’ol is rare among Mayan languages in possessing a special morpheme found with relativized nouns, the second position clitic = bä. While this morpheme is required for relativized argument nouns, it is not present in free relatives, which suggests a different derivation for this class of construction. Maximal (definite) and existential (indefinite) free relatives are described. They both make use of a fronted wh-expression and lack the morpheme = bä. Maximal and existential free relatives in Ch’ol appear identical to one another in structure. Following existing studies on other languages, it is argued that the different interpretations of these clauses are a result of the environments in which they appear. Finally, Ch’ol has two different types of constructions in which a determiner element is followed by a headless relative: one corresponding to the = bä structure and one corresponding to the free relative structure. The former is proposed to be a regular headed relative clause with an unpronounced head, as has elsewhere been argued for Yucatec. The latter, on the other hand, corresponds to a free relative structure with an added determiner element.

scholarly journals Papers from the workshop on Bantu relative clauses

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 261
Author(s):  
Laura Downing ◽  
Annie Rialland ◽  
Jean-Marc Beltzung ◽  
Sophie Manus ◽  
Cédric Patin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
The Other ◽  
Bantu Languages ◽  
Bantu Language ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Western Uganda ◽  
Restrictive Relatives

All of the papers in the volume except one (Kaji) take up some aspect of relative clause construction in some Bantu language. Kaji’s paper aims to account for how Tooro (J12; western Uganda) lost phonological tone through a comparative study of the tone systems of other western Uganda Bantu languages. The other papers examine a range of ways of forming relative clauses, often including non-restrictive relatives and clefts, in a wide range of languages representing a variety of prosodic systems.  

scholarly journals Acquisition of Zero Relative Clauses in English by Adult Turkish Learners of English

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eser Ordem
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
First Language ◽  
Turkish Language

Studies on acquisition of relative clauses by first and second language learners have evoked considerable interest in recent decades. In line with such studies, in this present study we aim to show the possible effect of first language (Turkish) on second language (English) in zero relative clause constructions. English uses certain stranded prepositions in zero relative clauses, whereas Turkish uses the same suffix in non-subject relative clause constructions. This observation in two typologically different languages led the study to claim that Turkish word order in non-subject relative clauses affects the acquisition of zero relative clauses in English. Fifty sentences in Turkish were prepared and composed of five categories. Each category consisted of ten sentences. Each category referred to one of the five cases in Turkish. These cases were accusative, locative, ablative, dative and instrumental. The participants (N=91) were asked to translate these Turkish sentences into English. The results showed that the participants tended to omit prepositions in English zero relative clauses except the construction that did not entail any preposition. Therefore, the study implies that Turkish language learners may be under the effect of their mother tongue while producing zero relative clauses in English.

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.

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