[Lingtyp] QUEST: Lexical meaning of the verb and relativization

[Ksenia Shagal]

Dear colleagues,

I am looking for cross-linguistic and language-specific studies on
relativization that focus on the connection between the lexical meaning of
verbs and their arguments that are most frequently relativized.

In other words, the question is:
Is there evidence that verbs differ in which of their dependents are most
commonly relativized or can be relativized at all? As for the second part
of the question, Malchukov (2008: 218), for example, reports for Even
(Tungusic) that the participial gap strategy can only be used if the
relativized participant belongs to the valency of the verb, and that is why
the locative relativization of the type 'the house where I lived' is
possible, but ‘the house where I ate’ is not. A similar tendency has been
reported for some other languages as well. But what about frequency?

In particular, I am interested in languages that employ contextually
oriented participles for relativization, i.e. in cases where one and the
same participial form can be used to relativize a wide range of arguments,
as in Mongolic, Tungusic,Turkic, and Dravidian languages. Do such
participles have different relativization capacity or different
relativization "preferences" depending on the verb?

I would be grateful for any references or observations on the topic.

Thank you in advance and best regards,

Ksenia Shagal
postdoctoral researcher
University of Helsinki
https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/ksenia-shagal
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