Non-syntactic factors and accessibility to relativization: evidence from Armenian

Abstract

Abstract Data presented by Sakayan (Sakayan, Dora. 1993. On Armenian relative participles and their access to AH (Accessibility Hierarchy). In André Crochetière, Jean-Claude Boulanger and Conrad Ouellon (eds.), Proceedings of the XVth International Congress of Linguists, Université Laval, 1992, vol. 2, 361–364. Sainte-Foy, Québec: Université Laval Press) show that Modern Eastern Armenian appears to violate the Relativization Accessibility Hierarchy (Keenan, Edward and Bernard Comrie. 1977. Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 8. 63–99), as participial relative clauses may be used to relativize certain oblique and genitive elements, but apparently not indirect objects. Stimuli were constructed to elicit relative clauses on all positions in the hierarchy to investigate whether participial relativization violates the hierarchy and shed light on the factors affecting relativization accessibility phenomena. Two different manifestations of the Accessibility Hierarchy (AH) were investigated: the distribution of participial relative clauses (RCs), and ‘non-target’ responses, in which the relativized element is expressed with a grammatical relation other than that which is targeted by the stimulus. The results show that the hierarchies for these two manifestations are significantly different. If the AH effects were a mechanical reflex of syntactic structure, we would not expect to find these differences. In fact, it appears that different factors are dominant in each case, notably role-reference association for non-target responses, and role prominence in terms of topicality and affectedness for participial relativization. The fact that participles are not normally used for indirect object (IO), while they may be used for some obliques and genitives, makes sense when the AH effects are analyzed as the combined operation of a number of factors, rather than a mechanical reflex of syntactic structure, and indeed, in colloquial language, participles may be used for IO under some circumstances, for example when it is the undisputed primary topic. Thus there is good evidence that non-syntactic factors are key to the operation of the AH in its various manifestations, and can account for this supposed violation.