acquisition of relative clauses in relation to langauge universals

john a. hawkins
2007

In East Asian languages, many structures called RCs should "be reclassified as attributive clauses." RCs "can be of different types--head-external, head-internal, or headless--and the precise grammar of each needs to be defined and contrasted with that of attributive clauses."

"Given an implicational universal of the form 'if a language has property P, then it has propoerty Q,' you cannot logically derive the prediction that property Q should be acquired before property P."

"...we can say that the predictions made by language universals for acquisition and interlanguages appear to hold, all things being equal. However, things might not always be equal!"

"In short,we need a predictive complex adaptive model of language acquisition."

the acquisition of relative clauses in relation to language typology

bernard comrie

noun phrase accessibility hierarchy (NPAH)
subject>direct object>other object>genitive/possessor

"...for native speakers of European languages learning japanese or korean as a second lanaguge (L2), the articles in this collection suggest surprisingly little transfer..."

"RCS in Japanese and Korean are so different structurally form their European translation equivalents...that learners simply treat them as a new strcture to be learned rather than as variants of any structure familar to them form their native language."

"Each position on the NPAH is justified empirically by the existence of at least one languge that relativizes on that position but on no lower position."

relativization

ronald w. langacker. fundamentals of linguistic analysis. 1972

"The story (that I read) GAP was sad."

includes a deep structure tree

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'