Relative clauses (original) (raw)

Locality and Intervention in the Acquisition of Greek Relative Clauses

Languages

According to the most recent formulation of Relativized Minimality, grammatical features are distinguished between those that are syntactically active and those that are not. Under this view, only the first play a role in the computation of locality. Furthermore, whether a certain feature is +/− syntactically active is determined by language-specific factors. Gender is one of the grammatical features that has been argued to have different values in Hebrew vs. Italian, and as a result, to play a role only in Hebrew-speaking children’s comprehension of relative clauses, in terms of intervention effects. Amidst this backdrop, this paper focuses on gender and case, and examines whether or not they have similar effects in the comprehension of relative clauses by Greek-speaking children. Greek differs from Hebrew in that gender does not qualify as a syntactically active feature, hence, the prediction is that it should behave like case, which does not qualify as syntactically active either...

Internal and External Relative Clauses in Ancient Greek

Journal of Greek Linguistics, 2014

In this paper I argue that Ancient Greek has two distinct strategies for relative clause formation, corresponding to what is known in typology as externally and internally headed relative clauses. Furthermore, I explore two differences between these constructions. First, in comparison with their external counterparts, internal constructions are more restricted semantically. They can only be interpreted as restrictive relative clauses, while external constructions can also be interpreted as non-restrictive. Second, internal constructions are more restricted syntactically, given that they are not used when the domain nominal is subject in the relative clause. For external constructions there is no such syntactic restriction. Finally, I point out a number of convergences between internal relative clauses and noun phrases with an attributive participle. The findings presented in this paper are based on a study of Xenophon.

Variation in Cappadocian Greek relative clauses: pattern replication and diatopy HANDOUT

This poster presentation discusses variation in the Cappadocian Greek relative clause with special attention to pattern replication and regional diversification. It identifies the Cappadocian RC as a case of X-clauses, indicating transient behaviour from an Indo-European to a Turkic type. This handout clarifies the content of the paper by providing some examples from a corpus of Cappadocian Greek folktales and proverbs.

Some syntactic features of relative constructions in the Greek New Testament

Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus, 2016

In the Greek New Testament, relative sentences that are introduced by relative pronouns alone, apart from the adverbial uses, are the most frequent subordinate sentence type. The research reported on in this paper aimed to investigate and describe a number of syntactic features of relative constructions in the Greek New Testament, taking account, among others, of some typological parameters that have been developed in the general linguistics literature for these constructions. The results indicate that relative constructions in the Greek New Testament have a variety of features, all of which have counterparts in some modern (or other ancient) languages, despite the differences. The relative sentence in the Greek New Testament is mostly postnominal, and the relative pronoun-type is used in those cases for encoding the role of the coreferential element in the relative sentence. Phrases expressing a variety of syntactic functions in a sentence (e.g. subject, direct object, etc.) are accessible to relativisation, that is, they can be represented by relative pronouns. Nominal elements serve mostly as antecedents of relative sentences, although sentences appear in that function as well. A variety of syntactic types of relative sentences can be distinguished, including the prenominal participial, postnominal finite/participial, circumnominal, free relative, adverbial, prejoined, postjoined, sentential and conjoined types. These can be linked in a systematic way to the four functions of relative sentences in the New Testament, i.e. identifying, appositive, adverbial and continuative. Relative sentences also play a role in communicative strategies. Prejoined relative sentences, for example, are most suitable for exposition and theme-building, especially in the correlative diptych construction.

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.

When phonology outranks syntax: postponed relative pronouns in Pindar

Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 2023

In ancient Greek, relative pronouns are, as a rule, subject to wh-movement and obligatorily surface at the left edge of the relative clause. However, the archaic poet Pindar sometimes allows material belonging to the relative clause to appear in front of the relative pronoun, which is then postponed within its clause. In this paper, I survey all relative clauses in the surviving texts by Pindar and study the possible differences in semantics and syntax between relative clauses with initial and postponed relative pronouns, which turn out to be indistinguishable in both respects. I suggest that postponed relative pronouns do move syntactically to the Spec of their relative clause but are then optionally treated as postpositive words and surface in second position in the relative clause. Phonological arguments, based on the distributional properties of postpositive words and on the metrical makeup of Pindar’s texts, are put forward to show how postponed relative pronouns select a host at the left edge of the relative clause and incorporate phonologically to it. The informational status of relative pronouns as ratified (given) topics triggers their phonological demoting, which turns them into postpositive words, a regular process in ancient Greek. Approaching the position of relative pronouns as a conflict between syntactic and (informationally driven) phonological alignment explains why Pindar’s strategy for relativization remained rare in ancient Greek and eventually disappeared: It took one specific poetic genre to allow phonology to outrank syntax.