Asymmetries in relative clauses in West Germanic
Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
Final Report Abstract
The project examined asymmetries in West Germanic relative clauses, concentrating on the differences between relative complementisers and relative pronouns, as well as the doubling option featuring the co-occurrence of these two elements. It was found that the availability of numerous alternative ways of overtly marking relative clauses is a typologically rare setup, also in the context of Germanic, since North Germanic languages exhibit less variation in this respect. Especially the doubling pattern proves to be rare, which is partly due to the relative pronoun and the relative complementiser being near-synonymous, making doubling redundant. In addition, though, the project has also shown that doubling is subject to further restrictions such that while demonstrative-based relative elements readily combine with interrogative-based relative elements, leading to asymmetric patterns in terms of the etymology, the symmetric combination of two relative elements with a similar etymological base is almost non-existent. This can be attributed to feature incompatibility, and it is not restricted to West Germanic but can also be observed in South Slavic. The project also developed a model for analogical changes involving syntactic paradigms, showing that relative complementisers can be borrowed from other constructions, specifically from similative and equative clauses, in an analogical way. This provides an alternative route for the introduction of relative complementisers, going beyond grammaticalisation processes pertaining to the reanalysis of a relative pronoun into a complementiser. Further, one key finding of the project was that relative markers not only spread along the lines of the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy, but also along a locative hierarchy, in which locatives constitute a starting point. While these processes operate separately in principle, their simultaneous application may result in a conspiracy of multiple factors producing the same output, as is apparently the case in South German. Further, the project examined subject/object asymmetries in relative clauses. Particular attention was paid to Middle English and Early Modern English. It was found that subject/object asymmetries are attested from Middle English onwards, such that the complementiser strategy is more dominant in subject relative clauses while the pronoun strategy is predominant in object relative clauses. While the overall distribution regarding the major strategies is not unexpected, the fact that the effects are very strong also on the introduction of the novel pronoun strategy is not straightforward. Even more surprising is the finding that subject/object asymmetries are relevant also for the distribution of the individual pronouns along the lines of the personal versus non-personal distinction. This finding reinforces the hypothesis that the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy is directly relevant for the diachronic development of relativising strategies, such that more distinct forms are expected in the lower functions of the hierarchy. In this respect, the project also investigated the relation between the cut-off point in the distribution of the strategies and the case system of the language. In English, the cut-off point is between subjects and direct objects; indirect objects and PP complements pattern with direct objects. This reflects the basic properties of the case system: nominative is used for subjects, while direct objects and indirect objects, as well as PP complements, are marked by the accusative. This arrangement contrasts with the findings for Alemannic, where the cut-off point is between direct objects and indirect objects, such that subjects and direct objects are predominantly marked by the complementiser strategy, while indirect objects are rather marked by the pronoun strategy (or by the doubling strategy). This is in line with the Alemannic case system, in which the nominative and the accusative case are essentially syncretic, so that subject and object pronouns pattern together, while the dative case is marked differently, making indirect object relative clauses distinct. The fact that clear cut-off points can be identified in either language, irrespective of the overall preferences for the complementiser or the pronoun strategy, suggests that the distribution of relative markers does not simply follow the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy in a gradual way: rather, the distribution can be characterised as an uneven split with a single cut-off point in the Hierarchy. The stability of these cut-off points across slightly different varieties suggests that the distribution is genuinely related to more general, fundamental features of the given grammatical systems.
Publications
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Relative clauses in South Slavic and the predictability of morphosyntactic features. In Petr Biskup, Marcel Börner, Olav Mueller-Reichau & Iuliia Shcherbina (eds.), Advances in formal Slavic linguistics 2021. Berlin: Language Science Press
Bacskai-Atkari, Julia
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Clause Types (and Clausal Complementation) in Germanic. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford University Press.
Bacskai-Atkari, Julia
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Clause typing in Afrikaans: A questionnaire and its results
Bacskai-Atkari, Julia
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Clause typing in Frisian: A questionnaire and its results
Bacskai-Atkari, Julia
