Relative clauses

edward l. keenan

"Our purpose here is to characterize the types of relative clauses which the langauges of the world present."

restrictive relative clause (RCS):
"I picked up two towels that were lying on the floor
John gave a check to the farmer whose cows Bill stole
Every student who Mary advised passed the exam."


restrictive clause includes:
determiner (optional)
domain noun (optional)
restrictive clause (S rel)

"There is a general tendency across languages to favor postnominal as opposed to prenomical RCS. More specifically, postnominal RCS are almost the only type attested in verb-initial languages."

In SVO languages, "postnominal RCS are the overwhelming norm..."

"...it is only in verb-final languages that prenominal RCS are the only or most productive form."

Corelatives
"These are not NPs and thus a fortiori not RCS on our definition, but they are the functional equivalent of RCS in many languages..."

S
S rel S main
COREL + NP rel NP ana

Hindi:
COREL man GEN dog sick is, that man DO I ERG saw
Which man's dog is sick, that man I saw

"...corelatives are not attested in rigid verb-final languages such as Japanese and Turkish. Nor are they attested in rigid SVO or verb-initial languages"


'I saw the man whose dog is sick'