Extraposed relative clauses

[Richard Valovics]

Hungarian certainly allows extraposed RCs to the right even with
an intervening NP:

János azt a könyvet tette az asztalra, amelyiket Anna tegnap vette.
John that the book laid the table-on, that Anna yesterday bought.
John laid the book that Anna had bought yesterday on the table.

In such a case, the demonstrativ pronoun indicates which NP the
RC belongs to. Right extraposed RCs are quite usual in Hungarian.
I believe also left extraposed RCs to be grammatical, I doubt,
however, that they can be considered any usual:

Amelyiket Anna tegnap vette, azt a könyvet tette János az asztalra.
Best regards

Date sent:      	Wed, 18 Jun 2003 03:54:16 -0400
Send reply to:  	Roger Levy <rog at STANFORD.EDU>
From:           	Roger Levy <rog at STANFORD.EDU>
Subject:        	Extraposed relative clauses
To:             	LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG

> Dear typologists,
>
> I'm interested in the cross-linguistic distribution of the extraposed
> relative clause, tentatively defined as a phrase internally
> indistinguishable from ordinary (adjacent) relative clauses, but separated
> from the noun phrase it modifies by intervening material that is not part
> of the noun phrase.  (This definition would seem to exclude internally
> headed relative clauses, though I would be very interested to hear about
> discontinuously realized cases of these!) I know that RC extraposition
> occurs in English, German, and Russian:
>
>   A woman arrived who was wearing a red hat.
>
>   Er hat das Buch hingelegt, das  Lisa gestern   gekauft hatte.
>   He has the book laid-down, that Lisa yesterday bought  had.
>   "He put down the book that Lisa had bought yesterday."
>
>   On imenno  tot  dom    kupil,  kotoryj emu i   byl nuzhen.
>   He exactly that house  bought, that    him and was necessary.
>   "He bought precisely the house that he needed."
>
> (The German example is due to Lars Konieczny.)
>
> As far as I know, in all these cases the extraposition must be rightward.
>
> If you know whether a particular language allows or disallows relative
> clause extraposition, I would be very grateful for brief information on
> the language and the facts (ordinary RC position, direction of
> extraposition, if any, plus an example, would be excellent!).  I am very
> interested in negative examples -- languages that seem to disallow
> extraposition -- as well as positive examples of languages allowing
> extraposition.  Any references to broader work on the topic would of
> course be much appreciated!
>  I will post a summary of responses.
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Roger Levy
>


Richard Valovics, amanuensis, cand.mag.
Institut for Pædagogisk Antropologi
Danmarks Pædagogiske Universitet