European relative clauses and the uniqueness of the relative pronoun (original) (raw)
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European relative clauses and the uniqueness of the Relative Pronoun Type
Rivista di lingüística, 2007
European resumptive-introductory relative pronouns and the correspondent type of relative clause are one of the core properties of the Standard Average European. (Indo)-European languages are typologically isolated in having developed a clause-initial case-marked pronoun that introduces a relative clause. Taking into account not only the standard, but also the non-standard, language's usages, especially considering differences between speech and writing, the paper argues in favour of a more complex view about European relative clauses. European relative pronouns come from two different evolutionary lines. Continental West Germanic languages (Dutch, German) maintain and still use an inflected (Indo-European) relative pronoun while Romance languages, Greek, and English adopt a mixed system where an inflected relative pronoun alternates with an invariant marker introducing relative clauses and it is the last form that better continues the IE form. In fact, in these same languages the 'new' relative pronoun (from *ille qualis) is a Medieval (at least XII century) innovation originated in a common written (literary) tradition, influenced by Latin language. So, the diffusion in Europe of the relative pronoun strategy reflects the 'sharing' of a common (written) cultural tradition. Its written origins explain the relative uniqueness of the relative pronoun strategy if cross-linguistically considered. *
Persistence and renewal in the relative pronoun paradigm: the case of Italian
«Folia Linguistica Historica» XXVI, 2005, 115-138 , 2005
In the course of the development of Romance languages from Latin, new relative pronouns of the type of Italian il quale were introduced, while the relative pronouns of Latin origin underwent various reductions of case marking as well as the weakening of gender and number distinctions, thus tending to become invariable markers. The renewal of relative pronouns in Romance languages deserves closer attention because relative pronouns are crosslinguistically a quite uncommon type (Comrie 1989:149). This paper attempts to reconstruct the conditions for the emergence in Romance languages of a relative pronoun reproducing the morphological properties of the Latin relative. The discussion focuses in particular on Italian. It is claimed that the il quale type was first used as a textual cohesion device to link a clause with a preceding one when they shared a participant. The data extracted from a corpus of Old Italian texts also suggests that non-restrictive uses of il quale were primary while restrictive ones were secondary. The il quale type seems to have entered the relative paradigm starting from the most accessible syntactic roles of Subject and Object and then to have spread down the hierarchy to the less accessible roles.
PERSISTENCE AND RENEWAL IN THE RELATIVE PRONOUN PARADIGM: THE CASE OF ITALIAN 1
Folia Linguistica Historica XXXVI,2, 115-138, 2005
ANNA GIACALONE RAMAT 1. Developmental trends in the cross-linguistic coding of relative relations In his typological analysis of relative clauses (=RC), Comrie (1989: 149; 2002, 2003) notes that the relative pronoun (=RP) type is widespread in the languages of Europe but is cross-linguistically quite rare. Indeed, he points outs that examples found outside Europe nearly always turn out to have arisen under the influence of some European languages. Thus the relative-pronoun type gives "the impression of a type that arises rarely spontaneously, but which once it has arisen, is a favoured construction for borrowing" (Comrie 2003: 20). 2 A number of interesting questions arises from this suggestion: first of all one might ask whether RPs are a stable feature in the languages which use them, or show a tendency towards change, reduction or renewal giving rise to more common relative clause formation strategies, such as the anaphoric pronoun strategy and the gap strategy (Comrie 1989: 147ff., Givón 1990: 655). Both strategies, as noted by Comrie (2002), are well represented in Mediterranean and European languages, which have largely lost their case systems. Secondly, one would not expect new relative pronouns to arise easily. For this reason it is striking that Romance languages have recreated a relative pronoun of il quale type, which is marked for gender, number and syntactic role of the relativized item. The motivation for this change deserves to be investigated further. This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents a general picture of the developmental trends from Latin to Romance, taking Italian as an illustrative example. Section 3 illustrates different types of RC. Section 4 outlines the history of il quale and formulates the main claim of this paper, namely that il quale was originally used as a means of textual cohesion. Section 5 presents the results of a corpus study of Old Italian texts. Section 6 explores some Romance and Germanic parallels.
The diachronic typology of relative clauses
This thesis investigates the diachronic behaviour of relative clauses across a broad sample of constructions from genetically and geographically diverse languages. Previous studies of change in relative clause constructions have most frequently been restricted to individual languages or language families. By comparing such studies with each other and with the historical records of languages that have less commonly been the focus of diachronic syntactic works, I examine the strength of evidence for developments that are predicted by earlier literature to be "natural" or even "universal'' pathways of change (for example, various sources of relative clause markers, the development of hypotaxis out of parataxis, shift from prenominal to postnominal relative clause position). I also look for evidence of changes that synchronic typological studies of relative clause constructions might lead us to expect to find (i.e., diachronic variation in the same parameters by which relative clause types distinguish themselves synchronically). I conclude that the sources of relative clause markers and the results of the extensions of these markers into other constructions are more varied then has generally been thought to be the case, including, for example, such sources as classifiers and discourse markers. Changes in other features of relative clauses, however, such as verb forms, embeddedness, and the relative position of the relative clause and its head tend to be remarkably stable over long periods of time. The factor that appears to have the greatest influence on whether changes in these otherwise stable features do occur is language contact. Features of relative clauses, markers, and even entire constructions can be copied from other languages, competing with pre-existing constructions until in some cases one replaces the other, and in others the two are redistributed according to considerations such as restrictiveness, animacy, case role or similar. These results point to the importance of incorporating the effects of language contact into models of language change rather than viewing contact situations as exceptional. There are also implications for the definition of relative clauses, their syntactic structures, and the relationships between the different "subtypes'' of this construction.
Diachronic Development of English Relativizers: a Study in Grammar Competition
In the 1950s, the Czech syntactician Ivan Poldauf wrote an essay on the diachronic development of the syntax of English relative clauses focuses. In this essay, we use some of his ideas on how the three "strategies" used in Modern English entered the language, since none of them are direct developments of the two Old English strategies. The most straightforward development consists of replacing the OE invariant relativizer þe with þe + at, where at, unmentioned by Poldauf, is the unmarked finite clause complementizer of Old Norse. The second strategy, a spontaneous late Middle English innovation, is essentially the dropping of that, giving rise to "contact relatives", rare to the point of non-exitence in both Old English and Old Norse. Perhaps the most interesting development is how late Middle English reintroduced the Indo-European use of interrogative pronouns, especially which, as relatives. We argue, following Poldauf's suggestion, that this change in English grammar was accomplished by French speakers/writers in 14th century England, as they switched to English as a first language. This then qualifies as one of the relatively rare genuine instances of second language speakers making a permanent modification in the grammar of their new language.
On the grammaticalization of kwi-/kwo- relative clauses in Proto-Indo-European
Grammatical Change in Indo-European Languages, V. Bubenik - J. Hewson - S. Rose (eds.), 2009
There is no general agreement as to whether relative clauses can be reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European and, in case they can, as to what pronoun was used for introducing them. It is thus interesting to review the evidence available for the reconstruction of the process of grammaticalization of *kwi-/kwo- relative clauses. Attention is brought to the synchronic and diachronic typological evidence of the relationship between relative, interrogative, and indefinite pronouns, since it can shed light on these phenomena. New insights can also be gained if we take into account the existence not only of restrictive and appositive relative clauses, but also of a third type – maximalizing relative clauses. The uses of *kwi-/kwo- relative clauses in older Indo-European languages suggest that the grammaticalization of this pronoun as a relative marker can be best explained as arising from its previous interrogative value and must have originated in maximalizing relative clauses.
Atlantis
Generally speaking, the study of the historical evolution of the English language has tended to focus upon the fields of morphology and phonology. As for syntax, reference may be made to the existence of highly acknowledged histories of English devoted to this level of linguistic analysis-most notably Rydén (1979), Traugott (1972) or Visser (1984)-as well as monographic editions of international conferences such as Gotti (1993) and the chapters devoted to this field in the volumes of The Cambridge History of the English Language (Hogg 1992). Likewise, some of the classic works devoted to a comprehensive account of the history of the English language also contained monographic chapters or sections on the evolution of syntax, such as Strang (1970), which covered all the fields both of the internal history of the language and also the social background. The work under consideration, Relativization in Early English (950-1250): The Position of Relative Clauses, may be said to fill an existing gap, in so far as it offers the scholar a complete and rigorous analysis of the evolution of relative clauses during the Old and Middle periods of the English language. The treatment given to relative clauses in some of the most representative existing manuals of Old and Middle English has been succinct. Thus, in the chapter that approaches 'Syntax' in the Volume of The Cambridge History of the English Language devoted to the Old English period, Traugott (1992) focuses on the most significant differences between these constructions in Old and Present-Day English, respectively. Some of these concern the absence of a specific relativizer in Old English, or the inadequate application of the Modern English classification into restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses to the Old English adjectival constructions. The approach to the structures of relative clauses during Middle English has tended to concentrate on aspects such as the progressive simplification of the paradigms inherited from Old English, or also the introduction of the interrogative pronouns as relativizers, particularly from the fourteenth century onwards. The contrasts between the relevant features of relative pronouns in the Middle and Modern English periods, respectively, which concern aspects such as animacy and information, have also been accounted for by authors such as Fischer (1992). Concretely, the work under analysis dwells upon the way in which the position of relative clauses with respect to the main clause has evolved throughout the history of the English language, in particular, during the periods corresponding to Late Old English and Middle English. Traditionally, under the so-called parataxis hypothesis, it has been generally maintained that relative clauses have evolved from being extraposed structures adjoined to the main clause, towards being positionally embedded structures
1995
This article discusses relative clauses in different varieties of German, paying special attention to the case of the relative pronoun. It is argued that the possible diachronic and dialectal variation is determined by two conditions, called C-visibility and case visibility, and their interaction. The article is structured as follows. First some characteristics of Old High German (OHG) and Middle High German (MHG) pertaining to relative clauses are described: the relative pronoun may bear a case assigned by the matrix clause (case attraction) and there are asyndetic relative clauses. Case attraction is shown to obey a condition of case visibility operating on a case hierarchy. Section 3 deals with relative clauses in New High German (NHG), where, in contrast to OHG and MHG, the relative pronoun may not be deleted and there is no case attraction. These changes are argued to be closely connected with changes in verbal position. In contrast to the earlier stages of German, a clause-fin...