Types Of Relative Clauses Research Articles

Escape from Noun Complement Clauses in Avatime

This paper discusses the status of island phenomena in Avatime, an endangered Kwa language of Ghana. We focus on clausal adjuncts, specifically noun complement clauses (NCCs). We show that while standard adjuncts are strong islands in Avatime, NCCs allow argument extraction. We suggest that this is related to the fact that NCCs in Avatime are not a type of relative clause. Instead, NCCs involve a kind of serial verb construction, which independently allows for extraction.

Clausal Postpositioning in German Regional Language

This article presents the results of a corpus study of clausal postpositioning, that is, the occurrence of a sentential constituent in the postfield of the matrix clause to which it is syntactically linked, in German regional language. Analysis of 11,027 clauses from 60 spoken regiolect and dialect texts reveals that clausal postpositionings occur most frequently as non-relative finite clauses, followed by relative clauses, and lastly, infinitival constructions. Notably, while non-relative finite clauses comprise a smaller proportion of postpositionings in regiolect compared to dialect, relative clauses and infinitival constructions show the opposite trend. Adjunct clauses occur most frequently, followed by complement clauses, in both regiolect and dialect. Furthermore, in both varieties, postpositioning is more prevalent in verb-first and verb-second clauses than in verb-final clauses. This finding is attributed to restrictions on syntactic subordination. Finally, non-relative finite clause and relative clause types that may be embedded in both the postfield and inner field are center-embedded at mean relative frequencies of 13.42% and 28.17%, respectively. These findings shed light on contradictory claims in the literature regarding the possibility and frequency of clausal embedding in the inner field.

The division of main and subordinate discourse information in real-time comprehension

The study examines the role of discourse structure representation in real-time comprehension, with a focus on how main discourse and subordinate discourse information guides language processing. Using a web-based visual world eyetracking paradigm, we investigated pronoun resolution in two types of relative clauses: appositive relative clauses (ARCs) and restrictive relative clauses (RRCs). While ARCs were generally considered as secondary and side-commentary information, aligning with subordinate discourse, RRCs were usually construed as part of the main discourse. Making use of this distinction between ARCs and RRCs, the current study examined pronoun resolution with two possible antecedents. In one condition (RRC), the two antecedents were part of the same discourse whereas in the other (ARC), they were in distinct discourse units. We found stronger competition between the two possible antecedents in the former condition than the latter. Our findings can potentially be explained by an encoding interference, where linguistic entities encoded with similar discourse status information can lead to an interference effect.

Russian Children and Their Relatives: What Can a Free Word Order Language Reveal About the Subject/Object Asymmetry?

ABSTRACT The present study revisits the well-attested phenomenon of Subject/Object Asymmetry in relative clause comprehension by monolingual Russian pre-school children. Additionally, it examines the NP-V and the V-NP word order types when the embedded NP precedes or follows the verb. Both the word orders are grammatical for Russian subject and object relative clauses alike. Object relative clause comprehension difficulty was evidenced across all the age groups. Word order alternation (V-NP vs NP-V) did not significantly affect the accuracy rates. Besides the efficacy of the agent-first strategy, growing morphological knowledge compels children to update their ongoing structural analysis, which results in embedded NP errors. Yet, even at 6 years of age, children do not display word order preferences to go with a particular relative clause type that are found in Russian-speaking adults. Restricted exposure to written texts at pre-school age as well as low validity of word order as a cue to thematic role assignment are discussed as possible reasons for children’s insensitivity to word order manipulation in Russian relative clauses.

Production of relative clauses in Cantonese-speaking children with and without Developmental Language Disorder

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) has been explained as either a deficit deriving from an abstract representational deficit or as emerging from difficulties in acquiring and coordinating multiple interacting cues guiding learning. These competing explanations are often difficult to decide between when tested on European languages. This paper reports an experimental study of relative clause (RC) production in Cantonese-speaking children with and without DLD, which enabled us to test multiple developmental predictions derived from one prominent theory − emergentism. Children with DLD (N = 22; aged 6;6–9;7) were compared with age-matched typically-developing peers (N = 23) and language-matched, typically-developing children (N = 21; aged 4;7–7;6) on a sentence repetition task. Results showed that children’s production across multiple RC types was influenced by structural frequency, general semantic complexity, and the linear order of constituents, with the DLD group performing worse than their age-matched and language-matched peers. The results are consistent with the emergentist explanation of DLD.

Relativization in Likpakpaln (Ghana): New typological perspectives on the Mabia (Gur) languages

AbstractThis article provides the first systematic account of relativization in Likpakpaln, an understudied Mabia (Gur) language of Ghana. Broadly speaking, Likpakpaln features two types of relative clauses: restrictive and non-restrictive. Both types of relative clauses are finite and marked by a relative pronoun as well as a clausal definite determiner. The first type is always headed by an indefinite noun. The second is invariably headed by a definite head noun, is additionally marked by a prosodic break, and is usually under focus. The relative pronoun is a composite form comprised of a noun class agreement marker and an invariant relative marker. A number of the features of relative clauses in Likpakpaln align it with other Mabia languages of the region, whereas others distinguish it from these languages. This analysis situates Likpakpaln within its genealogical and areal context while providing new typological perspectives on the Mabia languages as a whole.

Variation in the Usage of Relativisation Strategies in Migrant and Non-migrant English Speakers

ABSTRACT This study considers the use of adnominal restrictive relative clauses based on data from an acceptability rating task. We asked non-migrant native speakers (n = 24) of English and migrant native speakers (n = 28) of English to judge three different types of relative clauses. Results indicated that these speakers rate the relative markers that and zero more positively in line with the current situation in Present-day English. 1 The similar behaviour in the rating shows that major driving forces of language variation such as colloquialisation and Americanisation are stronger than other forces such as language contact. The similarities in the usage of relativisation strategies observed between contemporary Englishes and language competences of migrant and non-migrant speakers support the emergence of a new variety of English similar to other documented varieties that emerged in comparable contexts. 2

The relative clause resisting unification

AbstractCinque (2020) presents a unified theory positing that various types of relative clauses (RCs) originate from a single, double-headed universal structure via raising or matching. The Frame Noun-Modifying Clause (FRC) as described and analyzed by Matsumoto et al. (2017a, 2017b) presents a significant challenge to Cinque's framework, as it does not conform to any of Cinque's identified RC types, which include amount RCs, kind(-defining) RCs, restrictive RCs and non-restrictive RCs. The FRC eludes derivation via the proposed matching or raising mechanisms. Determining the semantic link between the head noun and the FRC, as well as its external merger position, remains elusive. One might suggest that inserting additional material into the FRC, which incorporates a plausible internal head, could clarify their connection. This approach falls short of providing a systematic and coherent syntactic criterion, relying instead on semantic intuition that lacks operational reliability.

Capturing individual differences in sentence processing: How reliable is the self-paced reading task?

Advances in research on language processing have originally come from group-level comparisons, but there is now a growing interest in individual differences. To investigate individual differences, tasks that have shown robust group-level differences are often used with the implicit assumption that they will also be reliable when used as an individual differences measure. Here, we examined whether one of the primary tasks used in psycholinguistic research on language processing, the self-paced reading task, can reliably measure individual differences in relative clause processing. We replicated the well-established effects of relative clauses at the group level, with object relative clauses being more difficult to process than subject relative clauses. However, when using difference scores, the reliability of the size of the relative clause effect was close to zero because the self-paced reading times for the different relative clause types were highly correlated within individuals. Nonetheless, we found that the self-paced reading task can be used to reliably capture individual differences in overall reading speed as well as key sentence regions when the two types of relative clause sentences are considered separately. Our results indicate that both the reliability and validity of different sentence regions need to be assessed to determine whether and when self-paced reading can be used to examine individual differences in language processing.

How semantics works in Chinese relative clause processing: insights from eye tracking.

Recent years have witnessed much research on semantic analysis and syntactic anatomy in ordinary language processing. However, it is still a matter of considerable debate about when and how the semantic integration of single word meanings works and interacts with syntax during on-line comprehension. This study, in an eye-tracking paradigm, took 38 native speakers of Mandarin Chinese as the participants and took Chinese relative clauses as stimuli to figure out the functions of semantics by investigating the conditioning semantic factors influencing and governing the word order variation of Chinese relative clauses during different processing stages. Accordingly, this study manipulated two syntactic variables, i.e., relative clause type and the position of the numeral-classifier sequence (NCL) in the relative clause, as well as a semantic variable, i.e., the abstractness of the head noun that the relative clause modified. Specifically, the study addressed two questions: (1) when semantics is activated and interacts with syntax and (2) how semantics affects syntax during the time course of Chinese relative clause processing. The results indicated that: (1) Semantics was activated and interacted with syntax during the early and late processing stages of Chinese relative clauses, which challenged the sequential order of syntactic and semantic processes, and supported the claims of the Concurrent Processing Model. (2) The syntactic order of the Chinese relative clause was affected by the semantic information of the head noun that the clause modified. Object-extraction relative clauses (ORCs) had a conjunction preference for the order "an object relative clause preceding the numeral-classifier sequence and the head noun." Instead, the subject-extraction relative clause (SRC) which modified a concrete noun (CN) had a co-occurrence preference for the order "numeral-classifier sequence preceding the subject relative clause and the head noun," while the subject-extraction relative clause which modified an abstract noun (AN) had a co-occurrence preference for the order "subject relative clause preceding the numeral-classifier sequence and the head noun." The findings of this study were evaluated in light of the perspectives of truth value semantics of the syntactic components, the semantic compatibility of numeral-classifier sequence and its modified noun as well as the discourse functions of outer modifier nominals and inner modifier nominals.

A revisit of three hypotheses about second language development of English relative clauses

Abstract Cantonese-English learners in Hong Kong confront with substantial difficulty in development of English relative clauses. This study aims at verifying predictions of hypotheses about second language learners’ development of English relative clauses with data of written Hong Kong English. wh relatives and that relatives in the Hong Kong component of the International Corpus of English were identified. Frequencies of occurrence of distinct types of relative clauses in the Hong Kong component were compared to evaluate whether predictions of Keenan and Comrie’s (1977) Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy, Kuno’s (1974) Perceptual Difficulty Hypothesis, and Hamilton’s (1994) Subject-Object Hierarchy Hypothesis are supported by the corpus data respectively. Results indicate that the Perceptual Difficulty Hypothesis is supported by data of written Hong Kong English whilst the other two hypotheses are partially supported only. Hypotheses supported by corpus data of written Hong Kong English are suggested to inform English language education in Hong Kong by illuminating the instructional order of different types of English relative clauses.

A Minimalist Account of Free Relative Clauses in Zahrani Spoken Arabic

This paper explores the syntax of free relative clauses in Zahrani Spoken Arabic (henceforth ZSA). The paper shows that ZSA possesses two types of free relative clauses, viz., nominal free relative clauses and adverbial free relative clauses. The focus of the paper is on nominal free relative clauses. It is shown that nominal free relative clauses can appear in a subject position and a direct object position, and the range of relativization involves subject, direct object, indirect object, prepositional object and possessor relativization. The derivation of free relatives in ZSA involves resumption relativization strategy only where gaps are treated as null resumptive pronouns. As for distribution of null and overt resumptive clitics, there is an alternation between the use of null and overt resumptive pronouns/clitics in subject and direct object position. However, the utilization of overt resumptive pronouns/clitics is mandatory in indirect object, prepositional object and possessor position. It is argued that the free relative markers illi: and mi:n are complementizers. Furthermore, as null and overt resumptive clitics exhibit a big resemblance with respect to their behaviour in the coordinate structures and parasitic gaps, both free relatives with null or resumptive pronouns/clitics involve a null operator movement (in non-island contexts) from inside the free relative clause to the specifier of a complementizer phrase (spec CP). The CP is adjoined to a null antecedent occupying the head of a noun phrase (NP) which is a complement of a determiner phrase (DP) with an empty D.

Relative clause comprehension in Cantonese-speaking children with and without developmental language disorder.

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), present in 2 out of every 30 children, affects primarily oral language abilities and development in the absence of associated biomedical conditions. We report the first experimental study that examines relative clause (RC) comprehension accuracy and processing (via looking preference) in Cantonese-speaking children with and without DLD, testing the predictions from competing domain-specific versus domain-general theoretical accounts. We compared children with DLD (N = 22) with their age-matched typically-developing (TD) children (AM-TD, N = 23) aged 6;6-9;7 and language-matched (and younger) TD children (YTD, N = 21) aged 4;7-7;6, using a referent selection task. Within-subject factors were: RC type (subject-RCs (SRCs) versus object-RCs (ORCs); relativizer (classifier (CL) versus relative marker ge3 RCs). Accuracy measures and looking preference to the target were analyzed using generalized linear mixed effects models. Results indicated Cantonese children with DLD scored significantly lower than their AM-TD peers in accuracy and processed RCs significantly slower than AM-TDs, but did not differ from the YTDs on either measure. Overall, while the results revealed evidence of a SRC advantage in the accuracy data, there was no indication of additional difficulty associated with ORCs in the eye-tracking data. All children showed a processing advantage for the frequent CL relativizer over the less frequent ge3 relativizer. These findings pose challenges to domain-specific representational deficit accounts of DLD, which primarily explain the disorder as a syntactic deficit, and are better explained by domain-general accounts that explain acquisition and processing as emergent properties of multiple converging linguistic and non-linguistic processes.

Event-related potentials and brain oscillations reflect unbalanced allocation of retrieval and integration efforts in sentence comprehension

ABSTRACT Empirical studies have found a processing asymmetry between Chinese subject-extracted relative clauses (SRCs) and object-extracted relative clauses (ORCs). Still, there is no consensus on how this SRC-ORC asymmetry occurs. Thus, aiming to elucidate how the neural activity, in the forms of both event-related potentials (ERPs) and brain oscillations (i.e. event-related synchronisation/desynchronisation, ERS/ERD), attuned to sentences with different levels of processing difficulty, we conducted an electroencephalography (EEG) study to examine the comprehension of Chinese SRCs and ORCs. The results showed an N400 and a P600 effect when comparing SRCs and ORCs. Simultaneously, delta ERS was associated with N400 during the processing of both types of relative clauses and theta ERS with P600 during the processing of SRCs. By incorporating the ERP and ERS indexes, we propose that the dissociation between the integration and retrieval effort involved in sentence comprehension may account for the processing asymmetry between sentences.

English/Spanish Relatives and Their Relative Information Structure: A View from Language Contact in Puerto Rico

The goal of this paper is to analyse the impact of Main Clause Phenomena (MCP) such as Negative Preposing (NPr) in four types of relative clauses, namely definite restrictive, indefinite restrictive, non-restrictive and kind-defining relative clauses, establishing a contrast between English and Spanish and discussing the interconnection of the two languages in a language contact situation such as the one observed in Puerto Rico. To this end, I have carried out an experiment with monolingual native speakers of the two languages (control groups), where they have to judge the grammaticality/acceptability of the different types of relatives when NPr takes place. In addition, the same task is carried out by a bilingual group of Puerto Ricans (PR). The main purpose was to detect any interference of one language upon the other one regarding the licensing conditions of NPr in relative clauses. The main empirical result shows that English makes a distinction in terms of acceptability between types of relatives with NPr, whereas in Spanish NPr is licensed in all types of relatives, and this situation seems to be mimicked in the language contact situation in Puerto Rico, though some crucial differences are detected which suggest that PR bilinguals have an integrated I-language (sensu López 2020). The results support the idea that there are two big groups of relatives, namely asserted (very similar to root clauses) and non-asserted relatives. The latter include definite restrictive relatives, whereas the former include non-restrictive relatives, kind-defining relatives and indefinite restrictive relatives. Based on discourse-feature inheritance, intervention and the projection of a factive operator in non-asserted relatives (subject to parametric variation), I argue that the PR results show that when processing one specific language they may apply a syntactic rule of the other language, which I take to support the integrationist view of bilingualism.

THE SYNTAX ANALYSIS IN RELATIVE CLAUSE FOUND IN THE NOVEL ENTITLED “BUDDHA”

This research paper analyses relative clause and its syntax structure found in the novel entitled “Buddha”. The novel entitled “Buddha” is a literary work by Karen Armstrong. There are many data containing English relative clauses found in the novel entitled “Buddha”. Based on the phenomena, the researcher was interested in analyzing relative clauses found in the data source. Theory that was used in analyzing data was proposed by Quirk (1985), Sneddon (1996) and this was supported by other theories. The theory that was used to analyze the syntax structure was the theory proposed by Brown and Miller. This research study applied qualitative method in the process of analyzing data. The data containing English relative clauses were taken from the novel entitled “Buddha”. This research study aims to: (i) analyze the syntax structure in the relative clause found in the novel entitled “Buddha”, (ii) analyze the types of relative clauses in the relative clauses found in the novel entitled “Buddha”. 

The Syntax Analysis In Relative Clause Found In The Novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”

The paper analyzed syntax in relative clauses found in the novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. This research aims to analyze the syntax structure in the relative clause and find out the types of relative clauses found in the novel entitled “ The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. This is library research with qualitative method. The data source of this study was “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”, a literary work of kid story by Lyman Frank Baum. The theory of relative clauses that was proposed by Quirk (1985) and Sneddon (1996) was used to conduct the data. Furthermore, the researcher used the theory proposed by Brown and Miller to analyze the syntax structure. The data were taken from the novel entitled “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. The type of relative clause found is restrictive relative clause with the relative pronoun who.

Morphosyntactic Analysis of Relative Clause Markers in Chindali

This article analyses the basic morphosyntactic features of relative clause markers (RMs) in Chindali, spoken in Tanzania. A qualitative approach was employed with a descriptive research design in the process of generating, analysing data, as well as reporting the findings. The data for the study were collected through text collection. The researcher gathered sentences with relative clauses (RCs) from 10 informants by recording them with their consent, and three (3) written Chindali storybooks. Informants were sampled through the snowball technique. The study revealed that Chindali RCs are marked by free-standing relative pronouns that are bound by agreement. These RMs are classified based on the noun class system of the language. It further revealed that RMs can be formed morphologically with or without class agreement marker (CAM). Chindali RMs with CAM have the morphological structure of ‘CAM + stem-o’, whereas RMs without CAM have the morphological structure ‘stem (C/CC+O)’. RMs without CAM results from deletion process. RMs are distinguished phonologically by the reduplication of the consonants of the CAM(s), followed by a clitic ‘o’ which is the root of the marker. It is also distinguished by the affixation of the glides (G) ‘w’ and ‘y’ in some consonants, as well as the change of the vowel to clitic ‘o’. CAM has the phonological shape CVC (G) V. The relative clauses are introduced syntactically by the language’s relative markers placed at the beginning of a clause linking the RC and a head noun; thus, making the RC an NP syntactic modifier. In Chindali, relative clauses are externally headed postnominal relatives introduced by RMs with a NRC pattern expressing class agreement with the head noun. Semantically, relative markers influence the types of RCs that exist, whether they are restrictive or appositive relatives; and modify things, persons, animals or ideas. The study suggests further research into other aspects of Chindali’s relativization.

The Syntax Analysis in Relative Clause Found in the Novel “The Wonderful Wizard of OZ”

The paper analyses syntax analysis in relative clause found in the novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” is a literary work of kid story by Lyman Frank Baum and the illustration was made by W.W. Denslow. Dorothy lived with her Aunt Em, Uncle Henry and her dog, Toto. Theory of relative clauses that was proposed by Quirk (1985), Sneddon (1996) and was supported by other theories. The theory used to analyze the syntax structure was the theory proposed by Brown and Miller. The method that was used to get the data was qualitative, library research. The data were taken from the novel entitled “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. This research study aims to: (i) analyze the syntax structure in the relative clause found in the novel entitled “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”, (ii) analyze the types of relative clauses in the relative clauses found in the novel entitled “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”.

Familiarwhen-relatives and peculiarwhen-relatives in English

Typical headed relatives in English include a relative pronoun which takes the head as its antecedent. However, some modifyingwhen-clauses in this language are peculiar relatives in that their heads are not the antecedent ofwhenand they do not even have temporal referents. In view of the peculiarity of this type of relative clause, a novel account of the syntactic generation and interpretation of temporalwhen-clauses is pro- posed. Under this account four lexical entries ofwhen, which have different semantic and syntactic properties, are recognized. The semantics of variouswhens are analyzed based on existing work, while the syntactic properties of differentwhens in non-interrogative sentences are characterized in the form of lexical information, which is implemented in the framework of Dynamic Syntax. The work in this article enriches the description of the diversity of relatives and suggests that the analysis of relatives can be unified semantically but not syntactically.