zero-subj. relatives

[Nerbonne J.]

Amici cari,

If Dick Hudson is right about Tibor Kiss's sort of example being
due to zero-subject relative clauses, then note that an example like
'your mam [who] told me ...' would presumably be a nonrestrictive
relative clause with a zero-subject.

I've been expatriate too long to offer secure judgements, but I
think that zero-subject relatives do occur in my Am. Engl., e.g.,
in a sort of "raconteur" register:

  This guy [who] lives down the street comes in the other night.
 He orders a beer.  The bartender says ...

But I'd balk at using them nonrestrictively:

  Tom [who] lives down the street comes in.  He orders a beer...

And presumably 'my mam' is the sort of NP that can't be modified
by a restrictive relative.

If this is right, and if it's a general qualification, it would
provide reason for eliminating the relative clause analysis Dick
Hudson wished to contrast.

But I'd note that, while the first two examples Hudson gives
sound nearly OK to me, the last doesn't:

> (0c)	They're still building them high rise flats are going up all over the
> place.


For what it's worth, I find the example Tibor Kiss offered unlikely,
even under Carl Pollard's construal, where it should pattern like
	a is a subset of b is a subset of c ...
This sounds right as math, but then it doesn't transfer easily
to reporting gossip unless it's a mathematician's joke.

So where's it come from, Tibor?

John

--
John Nerbonne, Alfa-informatica
nerbonne at let.rug.nl
+31 50 363 58 15

On Friday 16 August 2002 10:51, Dick Hudson wrote:
> Dear Georgia, Paul and Carl,
> 	However I don't think we've quite eliminated my relative-clause
> explanation yet. There are several  (UK) non-standard dialects in which
> zero subject relatives are ok in *non-existential* clauses. Trudgill
> quotes: (0a)	That was the man done it. [done = did]
> Harris gives this (for Ireland): [sounds rather like Georgia'sexample]
> (0b)	Any man had a thatched roof he knew how to thatch.
> and this is from southern English English (Edwards):
> (0c)	They're still building them high rise flats are going up all over the
> place.
> I wonder how you can be sure that none such exist in USA. Of course Tibor
> is the ultimate judge: does he mix with non-standard speakers?
> 	In the long run I'm not sure that we can be sure that these explanations
> are totally unrelated because relative clauses are one way of chaining
> events: She told him who told his father who told his colleagues ...
> This could be one of those cases where two different syntactic analyses
> produce just the same semantics and it's impossible to choose between them.
> 	Dick
> Dick
>
> At 14:54 15/08/2002 -0700, you wrote:
> >On Thu, 15 Aug 2002, Dick Hudson wrote:
> >> Tibor thinks this is American:
> >> (1)	Your mam told my aunt told me
> >> Georgia denies all knowledge. I wonder if it's English-wide
> >> non-standard, where subject relatives are allowed to have zero relative
> >> pronoun; i.e. it's structurally like (2).
> >> (2)	Your mam told my aunt who told me
> >> This pattern is almost possible in UK standard in existentials:
> >> (3)	There's a man outside wants to see you.
> >>
> >> Dick
> >>
> >> Richard (= Dick) Hudson
> >>
> >> Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London,
> >> Gower Street, London WC1E  6BT.
> >> +44(0)20 7679 3152; fax +44(0)20 7383 4108;
> >> http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/home.htm
> >
> >Dick's (3) is definitely American. I won't attempt to judge standard or
> >not.  Knud Lambrecht has written about this construction, but I'm too
> >rushed to stop what I'm doing now and chase down the reference. My
> >recollection, though, is that according to Knud existential or
> >presentational meaning, or something in that general line of work, is
> >essential. It seems that way to me, too.  So Tibor's exx sound as exotic
> >to me as they do to Georgia.
> >
> >Paul
> > __________________________________________________________
> > Paul Kay                      Department of Linguistics
> > kay at cogsci.berkeley.edu       University of California
> > www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~kay    Berkeley, CA 94720, USA