"Relative clauses" with no relativized ele

[E.G.]

Hi all,

I'd like to thank Ron for pointing out the incompleteness of what I wrote,
and for the reference to his article. I hope I didn't give the impression I
was trying to give a complete description of noun complementation in Modern
Hebrew in an email.

What I *was* trying to say is that in some languages, unlike English, some
nominalizations (of utterance and cognition verbs, as Ron points out, but
also of some perception verbs too) can occur with a construction that is
explicitly and unmistakably marked as a complement clause. Moreover, the
nominalizations that take these explicit complement clauses are related to
verbs that can take the same type of complement clause. In such languages,
then, it's pretty clear that these instances involve complement clauses. It
doesn't mean that other noun complementation strategies don't exist for
other types of nouns.

However, my main point was more general, albeit poorly expressed. It's that
we can turn to cross-linguistic comparison in order to try to reach
generalizations about how languages encode meaning. These generalizations
are useful, because they can be used to ask "why" questions. For example,
it's not really possible to ask *why* Hebrew has two distinct strategies for
noun complementation, how *why* English has one. That's because it could
always be otherwise, and language change can alter the picture (and has!).
However, if we find that in languages that have two strategies, one is
limited to nominalizations of PCU verbs, then we have the beginnings of a
hierarchy that is amenable to functional explanation.

Anyway, it seems that Thomas Payne's question has turned up a pretty general
consensus that these constructions are complement clauses.

Best wishes,
Eitan






On 10 September 2010 23:26, Ron Kuzar <kuzar at research.haifa.ac.il> wrote:

> The Modern Hebrew data supplied by Eitan are incomplete.
> Hebrew distinguishes between locution (say, hear, think, etc.) and
> situation (action, event, state, etc.).
> What Eitan describes is only true with regard to nouns (and clauses)
> expressing locution. 'Announcement' is indeed such a noun.
> Words such as ba'ya 'problem', macav 'situation', or cara 'trouble',
> etc., whose denotatum is a situation, cannot be followed by ki, but only
> by Se-, e.g.:
>
> margiz oti ha-macav Se-kulam halxu (*ki kulam halxu)
> annoys me the-situation that-all went
> 'I am upset about the situation that all have gone'
>
> On the other hand, the relative Se- may be replaced by the more
> elegant and classical aSer, while the Se- of situation clauses may not.
> Sorry about the invented example. I am overseas now.
> All this has been described (with corpus data) in:
>
> Kuzar, Ron. 1993. Nominalization Clauses in Israeli Hebrew. Balshanut Ivrit
> [Hebrew
> Linguistics] 36: 71-89 [unfortunately available only in Hebrew].
>
> The article is somewhat outdated and contains some inaccuracies I would
> formulate differently today, but the basic distinction is valid in my
> opinion.
> Best,
> Ron Kuzar
> ---------------
> On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 8:54 PM, E.G. <eitan.eg at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I'd agree with Arie Verhagen. But there's a way that cross-linguistic
> > comparison can help what seems to be a purely theoretical question based
> on
> > a single language. The problem here is that English uses the same element
> > to
> > mark regular relatives and these "appositional" relatives. But if at
> least
> > one language encodes them by different means, then there's at least a
> good
> > case for seeing them as distinct functions. It's basically the same
> > principle that's used to decide whether to put a meaning on a semantic
> map.
> > So here are two languages that I know that encode them differently.
> >
> > In Modern Hebrew, these clauses can be encoded as a dedicated complement
> > clause (ki), which differs from the relative clause marker (Se-), e.g.
> >
> > ha-hoda'a Se-kibalnu
> > the-announcment rel-we_got
> > "The announcement that we got."
> >
> > ha-hoda'a ki hitbatel ha-mifgaS
> > the-message CMP was_cancelled the-meeting
> > "The announcement that the meeting was cancelled."
> >
> > In Coptic, these clauses are marked by ce-, which marks complement
> clauses,
> > *inter alia*, but not relative clauses:
> >
> > ph-mewi ce- (complement clause)
> > 'the-thought that (we are angry)'
> >
> > ph-mewi ete- (relative clause)
> > 'the thought that (we used to think)'
> >
> > This seems to be a pretty clear indication that these are complement
> > clauses
> > rather than relatives. Even if one doesn't like the notion of nouns
> taking
> > complement clauses (and why not? nominalizations in some languages can
> take
> > accusative modifiers as well as genitives), it still probably isn't
> > incidental that the nominalizations are of verbs that take complement
> > clauses when finite.
> >
> > As usual, the perspective in Talmy Givón's *Syntax* (vol. 2) is worth
> > looking at.
> >
> > Best,
> > Eitan
> >
> >
> > On 10 September 2010 19:21, Arie Verhagen
> > <Arie.Verhagen at hum.leidenuniv.nl>wrote:
> >
> > > And as another addition: the clauses that can only be introduced by
> > *that*
> > > (with no role to
> > > play in the subordinate clause) may be seen as (subtypes of) complement
> > > clauses,
> > > expressing a proposition with the noun functioning as Complement Taking
> > > Predicate (CTP),
> > > expressing a propostional attitude, epistemic/evaluative stance, etc.
> > > (following analyses by
> > > Thompson, Diessel, Langacker, myself, and others), i.e. not relatives.
> > Cf.
> > > constructions like
> > > "The claim is that X" (traditionally analysed as subject clauses), "I
> > claim
> > > that X", "I put forward
> > > the claim that X", in which the relationship between the verb or noun
> and
> > > the that-clause is
> > > comparable to the one in "The claim that X".
> > >
> > > --Arie Verhagen
> > >
> > > ----------------
> > > Message from Rong Chen <rchen at csusb.edu>
> > > 10 Sep 2010, 23:42
> > > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] "Relative clauses" with no relativi
> > >
> > > > To add to Joanne's comments:
> > > >
> > > > There are basically three ways to distinguish an appositive clause
> > > > (AC) from a relative clause (RC).
> > > >
> > > > 1) An AC can only be led by *that* while an RC can be led by other
> > > > pronouns.
> > > >
> > > > 2) The AC and the noun it modifies display an equative
> > relationship--one
> > > can say X
> > > > (denoted by the noun) is Y (presented by the appositive)--while an RC
> > > often doesn't
> > > > (except, perhaps, when the relative clause is sentential).
> > >
> > > > 3)--which Tom noted--*that* is not part of the clause in an AC; but a
> > > relative pronoun
> > > > is always part of the clause in an RC.
> > > >
> > > > Rong Chen
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Eitan Grossman
> > Martin Buber Society of Fellows
> > Hebrew University of Jerusalem
> >
>
>
>
> --
> ===============================================
>                    Dr. Ron Kuzar
> Address:       Department of English Language and Literature
>                    University of Haifa
>                    IL-31905 Haifa, Israel
> Office:          +972-4-824-9826, Fax: +972-4-824-9711
> Home:          +972-77-481-9676, Mobile: +972-54-481-9676
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> Email:           kuzar at research.haifa.ac.il
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> ===============================================
>



-- 
Eitan Grossman
Martin Buber Society of Fellows
Hebrew University of Jerusalem