Development Of Relative Clauses Research Articles

Subject‐Object Asymmetries and the Development of Relative Clauses between Late Middle English and Early Modern English

AbstractThis paper presents the results of a corpus study on the Wycliffe Bible and the King James Bible, examining the distribution of the pronouns who(m)/which and the complementiser that in relative clauses with a personal referent. The data indicate that the decisive factor in both periods was the function of the gap (subject vs. non‐subject): wh‐pronouns are preferred in object relative clauses, while that is preferred in subject relative clauses. In addition, the paper argues that the subject/non‐subject distinction was decisive not only regarding the major wh/that distribution but also regarding the who(m)/which distinction. While in the case of the wh/that distinction, a syntactic difference (relative pronoun versus relative complementiser) underlies the attested asymmetry, the pronouns who(m) and which do not differ in their core syntactic properties. The data clearly indicate that both the wh‐strategy in general and the pronoun who(m) in particular started to spread from the lower functions of the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy, whereby the spread of who(m) was one step behind the general spread of the wh‐strategy. The findings thus suggest that asymmetries along the lines of the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy are not necessarily paired up with syntactic asymmetries.

Relativas em Nheengatú ou Ingatú

O presente estudo trata das orações relativas da língua Nheengatú ou Ingatú, falada como primeira língua por aproximadamente 1.300 baníwas e 1.000 werekénas na região do Alto Rio Negro, e por aproximadamente 5.600 barés no Alto Rio Negro e no Médio Rio Negro. Rodrigues (1986) foi o primeiro linguista a tratar dos efeitos do contato do Nheengatú com o Português ao longo de 300 anos, destacando, como resultado desses efeitos, o desenvolvimento de orações relativas em Nheengatú. No presente estudo, com base em Keenan e Comrie (1977, 1979), Keenan (1985) e Payne (1997) descrevo as Orações Relativas do Nheengatú demonstrando que, nessa língua, sujeito, objeto direto, objeto indireto, oblíquo e nome possuído são relativizáveis, que as orações relativas são externas ao núcleo e que o sintagma nominal relativizado na oração relativa pode exercer as funções de sujeito, de objeto direto, objeto indireto e oblíquo. Mostro também que, em Orações Relativas do Nheengatú, que têm por núcleo um nome ou um adjetivo, o sintagma nominal relativizado é representado por uma lacuna (gap), podendo também ser representado por um pronome demonstrativo em certas condições.

Acquisition of Chinese relative clauses by deaf children in Hong Kong

This paper is a study of how deaf children in Hong Kong acquire Chinese relative clauses. The relative clause is reported to be a difficult structure for deaf children (Friedmann & Szterman 2006). While it may be true for postnominal relative clauses, it is unclear whether prenominal relative clauses are equally difficult for deaf children. This paper explores this question by examining deaf children’s comprehension and production of Chinese relative clauses via an elicited production task, a picture selection task and a dots-connecting task, which are all presented in written format. In addition to deaf children, typically developing Cantonese children and Cantonese adults with high Chinese proficiency are also recruited for comparison. The results show that deaf children fall behind typically developing Cantonese children in production. But deaf children with higher Chinese proficiency can perform similarly with typically developing Cantonese children. The error types and the types of non-RC responses produced by deaf children are also present in the data of typically developing Cantonese children, suggesting that deaf children do not undergo a different pathway in the development of relative clauses. While typically developing Cantonese children demonstrate non-significant subject advantage in production but object advantage in comprehension, deaf children do not demonstrate subject-object asymmetry in production and object advantage in comprehension.

Predication, WH-Movement, and the Development of Relative Clauses

French is generally considered to be fundamentally identical to English with respect to relative clause formation. However, I show that up to at least 6 years of age, French-speaking children, although they do have WH-movement in questions, show no evidence of having a WH-movement strategy for constructing relative, clauses. This contrasts with English-speaking children, who seem to acquire WH-movement in relative clauses relatively early. As noted by various researchers, children of 4 and 5 years of age produce relatives headed by the WH word what (The dog what bit him) in areas where the local dialect does not have what as a relative pronoun (cf. Flynn & Lust, 1980; Goodluck, personal communication, February 1988; Menyuk, 1969).