[Lingtyp] Relativization

[Dryer, Matthew]

In Koyra Chiini (Heath 1999: 192), the relative word is arguably a relative pronoun since it can occur with a postposition.

Coast Tsimshian has a construction which could be analysed as involving a relative pronoun in that relative clauses are marked with a word that varies for the grammatical relation of the head in the relative clause, gu if it is the A, in if it is the S or P (Mulder 1994: 142).

Heath, Jeffrey. (1999) A grammar of Koyra Chiini: The Songhay of Timbuktu. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Mulder, Jean Gail. (1994) Ergativity in Coast Tsimshian (Sm’algyax). Berkeley: University of California Press.

Matthew

From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>> on behalf of Bernard Comrie <comrie at linguistics.ucsb.edu<mailto:comrie at linguistics.ucsb.edu>>
Date: Monday, March 26, 2018 at 3:40 AM
To: "lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>" <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Relativization

Dear Jeff:

Some thoughts on your post.

The chapters in WALS are necessarily very brief, so often it will be necessary to look at other literature.

As many people have noted, including me back in an early publication on European-type relative clauses (Comrie 1998: 79), the European-type relative clause has recently (e.g. through colonialism) spread through contact to languages outside Europe. These are of course not independent instances of the development of this kind of relative clause.

I went into somewhat more detail on possible independent candidates for European-type relative clauses in Comrie (2006). If you compare this article with WALS, please note that the publication details are misleading; some points discussed in the 2006 article that came up during preparatory work on WALS did not find their way into the final version of WALS.

Regarding your specific question on Acoma: I'll need to check, as I don't have the relevant data immediately to hand.

Best,
Bernard

References

Comrie, B. 1998. Rethinking the typology of relative clauses. Language Design 1: 59-86.

Comrie, B. 2006. Syntactic typology: just how exotic ARE European-type relative clauses? In Ricardo Mairal and Juana Gil (eds.): Linguistic Universals, 130-154. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


On 2018/3/18 17:26, Jeff Siegel wrote:
Greetings:

In the description of relativization in WALS (features 122A and 123A), the relative pronoun strategy is shown to stand out “as being typically European since it is not found in Indo-European languages spoken outside Europe, and is exceptional more generally outside Europe” (Comrie & Kuteva 2013). This strategy is defined as follows:

“[T]he position relativized is indicated inside the relative clause by means of a clause-initial pronominal element, and this pronominal element is case-marked (by case or by an adposition) to indicate the role of the head noun within the relative clause.” (Comrie & Kuteva 2013)

The only language outside the European area shown to use this strategy is Acoma, Keresan language of New Mexico.

Could anyone lead me to examples of the relative pronoun strategy used in other languages outside Europe? Also, could anyone provide such examples from Acoma or related languages? (I can’t seem to find any in the descriptions of Keresan languages that I have examined.)

Reference:

Bernard Comrie, Tania Kuteva. 2013. Relativization on Subjects. In: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.). The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
(Available online at http://wals.info/chapter/122, Accessed on 2018-03-19.)

Many thanks,

Thanks,

Jeff


Emeritus Professor Jeff Siegel
Linguistics, School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
University of New England
Armidale, NSW 2351
Australia
https://www.une.edu.au/staff-profiles/bcss/jsiegel







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Bernard Comrie
Distinguished Faculty Professor of Linguistics, University of California Santa Barbara

E-mail: comrie at linguistics.ucsb.edu
Web site: http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/people/bernard-comrie

Department of Linguistics
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3100
USA

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