Standardizing relativization in Dinka (and other languages?)

[Brian MacWhinney]

John,

      There are lots of possibilities that one could imagine.  One could simply have preposed relatives with no markers
at all as in Japanese.  Or one could create a relativizer from currently existing deictics.  Or one could create adjectival relatives
with case markers.  And so on.  But determining which of these various options makes sense for Dinka would depend heavily on
what resources Dinka has and how it structures sentences.  For starters, if they have case markers, that is going to help a lot.
     Looking at the features of Dinka, can you specify some other languages that are relatively close in some of these features
and which have already developed relatives?  Perhaps that wouid give you the best hint about how to go.  Even more ideally, if
you could trace the historical development of relatives in those languages,  you may get further clues.
   The problem you pose raises a related question for readers of FunkNet.  Does anyone know of languages that have created
relativizers or relative structures as a part of over language innovation projects in the last century or so?  Understanding how that was done would also be illuminating.

-- Brian MacWhinney

On Dec 11, 2011, at 11:14 AM, john at research.haifa.ac.il wrote:

> They do have texts. In fact what I'm saying is based on their Bible translation.
> I'm working with a group of Dinka (the Dinka Language Development Association)
> to try to improve their writing system so that it can be used for all written
> functions (education through university level, government, law, etc.). It seems
> clear to me that this is going to require figuring out some relatively
> efficient way to do relative clauses. Or do you know of any languages which are
> used for all written functions which DON'T have relative clauses? I don't.
> John
> 
> 
> 
> Quoting Angus Grieve-Smith <grvsmth at panix.com>:
> 
>>     Yes, I agree with Mike.  Relative clauses may exist in English and
>> biblical Greek, but they don't exist in every language.  A consistent
>> strategy for translating something does not require changing the grammar
>> of the target language.
>> 
>>     If the Dinka speakers don't have texts, you need to just listen to
>> them.  Relative clauses are just a way to identify a thing based on the
>> activity or state it's involved in.  How do they do that spontaneously?
>> If they do it differently from the way we do, or from the way the
>> Evangelists did, maybe their way is better.
>> 
>> --
>> 				-Angus B. Grieve-Smith
>> 				grvsmth at panix.com
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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