Relative clauses -- TOPIC or FOCUS?

[George Aaron Broadwell]

Dear LFG-ers,

I've followed the discussion on relative clauses with some interest, but
one thing has puzzled me.  Perhaps some of you can clarify how we know what
the correct discourse function of the head of RC is with respect to the RC.

In most Mayan languages, there is a very clear morphological distinction
between focus constructions and topic constructions.  If you focus a
transitive subject, you *must* use a special verb form (usually called
"antipassive", but perhaps more correctly "actor focus", as Aissen as argued.)

For example in Kaqchikel, the facts are as follows:

(interrogative focus)

Who did John grab?		grab is in the neutral voice
Who grabbed the dog?	grab is in the actor focus voice

(contrastive focus)

It was the dog that John grabbed (not the cat).	grab is neutral voice
It was John who grabbed the dog (not Mary)	grab is actor focus voice

Compare this to topicalization, which doesn't use the actor focus voice:

As for the dog (TOPIC), John grabbed it		grab is neutral voice
As for John (TOP), he grabbed the dog		grab is actor focus voice

Now the problem is that relative clauses show the same pattern as focus
constructions, and not the pattern seen in topic constructions:

The dog John grabbed has mange.			grab is neutral voice
The man who grabbed the dog is my uncle		grab is actor focus voice

That suggests to me that the head of the relative clause has the discourse
role FOCUS, and not TOPIC.

Towards the end of his last post, Yehuda said "One thing we have to
remember is that 'relative clause' isn't an analysis
-- it's a taxonomic classification. Different languages may use different
formal devices to achieve the same consequence, and even one language may
use multiple devices."

Do people think that the head might be TOPIC in some lgs and FOCUS in others?

Aaron
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George Aaron Broadwell,  g.broadwell at albany.edu
Dept. of Anthropology, UAlbany, Albany NY 12222
(518)-442-4711   Web page: http://www.albany.edu/anthro/fac/broadwell.htm
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"I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than
diagramming sentences."   Gertrude Stein, Lectures in America, 1935.