Questionnaire on the relativization of circumnstantials

[Sonia Cristofaro]

************Apologies for cross-posting**************


Dear all,

my colleague Anna Giacalone Ramat and I are working on a project on the
relativization of circumstantials of time, place, manner, and reason, as
exemplified in the following English sentences

(1) The day we met it rained

(2) The place where we had dinner was packed with people

(3) The reason why he did that is really stupid

(4) The way you do that is very important

Working on languages such as Hebrew, Maltese and several Romance
languages, we found out that these relativization types are often
expressed by means of -case relativization strategies, that is,
strategies providing no indication about the syntactic role of the
relativized item. This is the case even if the language expresses other
relativization types by means of strategies providing explicit
indication about the role of the relativized item (+case strategies).
For instance, Italian has a relative pronoun ('il quale') inflected for
the syntactic role of the relativized item. This pronoun can be used for
indirect object, possessor and oblique relativization, as in (5) below.
However, Italian also has an invariable relative marker ('che') that
provides no indication about the role of the relativized item, and this
marker can be used for subject relativization, direct object
relativization, and the relativization of time circumstantials, as in (6)
and (7).

(5) L'uomo *al quale* ho dato le chiavi e' un mio collega
`The man I gave the keys to is a colleague of mine'

(6) L'uomo *che* e' venuto qui ieri sera e' un mio collega
`The man who came here last night is a colleague of mine'

(7) Il giorno *che* ci siamo incontrati pioveva
`The day we met it rained'


Similarly, relativization in Hebrew involves the use of an invariable
relative marker. This marker is usually accompanied by personal pronouns
indicating the role of the relativized item in indirect object, possessor,
and oblique relativization, but not in subject and direct object
relativization, or the relativization of time, place, manner, and reason
circumstantials.

Our data also suggest that the use of -case strategies in the
relativization of circumstantials is favored when the head noun is
accompanied by universal quantifiers such as 'every' and 'all', when the
head noun is semantically less specific and less referential, and when the
head noun is itself in circumstantial function in the main clause.

We would like to investigate these phenomena in as many languages as
possible. Therefore we set out a questionnaire on the relativization
of circumstantials, and we would be extremely grateful if you could
fill it out for your native language or language of expertise, if this
language allows for the use of both -case and +case relativization
strategies.

The questionnaire can be found on my homepage, at the address

http://dobc.unipv.it/linguistica/paginadocente.php?idd=121&id=121

The questionnaire consists of 35 sentences, that should be translated
in your native language or language of expertise. In addition to that,
we would really appreciate if you could provide us with some basic
description of relativization strategies in the language. Ideally,
translations should be provided with (minimal!) glosses, but as we
understand that would be extremely time-consuming, it will suffice to
specify which of the relativization strategies available in the
language is being used in each case.

Please send your responses both to me and to Anna Giacalone Ramat
(annaram at unipv.it).

Many thanks in advance for your help,

Sonia Cristofaro

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Sonia Cristofaro
Dipartimento di Linguistica
Universita' di Pavia
Strada Nuova, 65
I-27100 Pavia Italy
Te. +390382504484
Fax +390382504487
e-mail: sonia.cristofaro at unipv.it, russo at inrete.it