Relative clause

Relative clause


A relative clause is a subordinate clause that modifies a noun. For example, the noun phrase the man who wasn't there contains the noun man, which is modified by the relative clause who wasn't there. In many European languages, relative clauses are introduced by a special class of pronouns called relative pronouns; in the previous example, who is a relative pronoun. In other languages, relative clauses may be marked in different ways: they may be introduced by a special class of conjunctions called relativizers; the main verb of the relative clause may appear in a special morphological variant; or a relative clause may be indicated by word order alone. In some languages, more than one of these mechanisms may be possible.
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[edit] Accessibility Hierarchy
The antecedent of the relative clause (that is, the noun that is modified by it) can in theory be the subject of the main clause, or its object, or any other verb argument. In many languages, however, especially rigidly left-branching, dependent-marking languages with prenominal relative clauses[1], there are major restrictions on the role the antecedent may have in the relative clause.
According to the classic study of Bernard Comrie[2], noun phrases can be ranked the following order from most accessible to least accessible:
1.    Nominative or Absolutive
2.    Accusative or Ergative
3.    Indirect object (e.g. "the man to whom I have written")
4.    Oblique (adpositional) object (e.g. "the machine into which I put the coin")
5.    Genitive (e.g. "the woman whose daughter is ill")
6.    Comparative object (e.g. "the boy than whom I am smaller")
If a language can relativise positions lower in the accessibility hierarchy, it can always relativise positions higher up, but not vice versa. For example, Malagasy can relativise only subject and Chukchi only absolutive arguments, whilst Basque can relativise absolutives, ergatives and indirect objects, but not obliques or genitives or objects of comparatives.
Languages which cannot relativise directly on noun phrases low in the accessibility hierarchy can sometimes use alternative voices to "raise" the relevant noun phrase so that it can be relativised. The most common example is the use of applicative voices to relativise obliques, but in such languages as Chukchi antipassives are use to raise ergative arguments to absolutive.
[edit] Major types of relative clause
Across the world's languages, linguists have identified four major types of relative clause. These are typically listed in order of the degree to which the role of the antecedent in the relative clause is represented as follows:
1.    Gap strategy or gapped relative clause
2.    Relative pronoun
3.    Pronoun retention
4.    Nonreduction
[edit] Gapped relative clause
In this type of relative clause, there is simply a gap between the antecedent noun phrase and the relative clause modifying it, without any marker, or in some cases with a marker that can be best described as a complementizer.
This is the most common type of relative clause, especially in verb-final languages with prenominal relative clauses, but is also widespread among languages with postnominal externally headed relative clauses. Often the form of the verb is different from that in main clauses and is to some degree nominalised. In some languages, such as English, the complementizer may be non-overt, yielding a reduced relative clause.[3][4]
In non-verb-final languages, apart from languages like Thai and Vietnamese with very strong politeness distinctions in their grammars, gapped relative clauses tend however to be restricted to positions high up in the accessibility hierarchy. With obliques and genitives, non-verb-final languages that do not have politeness restrictions on pronoun use tend to use pronoun retention.
[edit] Relative pronoun type
In this type of relative clause, the relative clause is introduced by a pronoun that marks the antecedent for its role in the relative clause. This marking distinguishes it from the previous type where the role of the antecedent is not evident. All languages which use relative pronouns have them in sentence-initial position: though one could conceivably imagine a clause-final relative pronoun analogous to an adverbial subordinator in that position, they are unknown.
Relative pronouns in the strict sense are almost entirely confined to European languages, where they are widespread except among the most conservative Celtic family. The influence of Spanish has led to their adaption by a very small number of Native American languages, of which the best-known are the Keresan languages[5].
[edit] Pronoun retention type
In this type, the position relativised is indicated by means of a personal pronoun in the same syntactic position as would ordinarily be occupied by a noun phrase of that type in the main clause. It is equivalent to saying "the watch that I bought it" in English (where the last "it" is ungrammatical).
Pronoun retention is very frequently used for relativisation of inaccessible positions on the accessibility hierarchy in non-verb-final languages of Africa and Asia. It is similarly used by the Celtic languages of northwest Europe. However, only a very small number of languages, of which the best known is Yoruba, have pronoun retention as their sole grammatical type of relative clause.
[edit] Nonreduction type
In the nonreduction type, unlike the other three, the antecedent is a full-fledged noun phrase within an independent clause which is linked by various means to the remainder of the sentence. This can either be a special relative verb (as with some Native American languages), or a relative particle, as with the correlative clauses which are the strategy used by Hindi and Bambara. This correlative strategy is equivalent to saying "Which girl you see over there, she is my daughter", whilst the internally headed structure found in such languages as Navajo is equivalent to the (ungrammatical) English structure "[You see the girl over there] is my friend."
Dialects of some European languages, such as Italian, do use the nonreduction type in forms equivalent to English "The man just passed us by, he introduced me to the chancellor here." In general, however, nonreduction is restricted to verb-final languages, though more common among those that are head-marking.
[edit] Relative clauses in major languages
[edit] English
Main article: English relative clauses
In English, a relative clause follows the noun it modifies. It is generally indicated by a relative pronoun at the start of the clause, although sometimes simply by word order. The choice of relative pronoun, or choice to omit one, can be affected by whether the clause modifies a human or non-human noun, by whether the clause is restrictive or not, and by the role (subject, direct object, or the like) of the relative pronoun in the relative clause. In English, as in some other languages (such as French; see below), non-restrictive relative clauses are set off with commas, but restrictive ones are not:
•    I met a man and a woman yesterday. The woman, who had a thick French accent, was very pretty.
•    I met two women yesterday, one with a thick French accent and one with a mild German one. The woman who had a thick French accent was very pretty.
As regards relative clauses, English has two particularities that are unique among the Germanic languages:
1.    In other Germanic languages, if a relative pronoun is the object of a preposition in the relative clause, then the preposition always appears at the start of the clause, before the relative pronoun. In English, the preposition will often appear where it would appear if the clause were an independent clause — in other words, the relative pronoun "strands" it when it moves to the start of the clause. It used to be common to regard this as a grammatical error (see: Linguistic prescription) but in fact it has been a standard feature of the language since Middle English times.
2.    In other Germanic languages, a relative pronoun is always necessary. In English, however, it may be suppressed in a restrictive clause (as in "The man we met was very friendly"), provided it would not serve as the subject of the main verb. When this is done, if in the unsuppressed counterpart the relative pronoun is the object of a preposition in the relative clause, then said preposition is always "stranded" in the manner described above; it is never moved to the start of the clause.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_clause