Relative Pronouns Research Articles

Effective Sentences in Indonesian

This paper aims to describe effective sentences in Indonesian. It is shown that (in Indonesian) an effective sentence could be manifested by the addition or subtraction of a sentence element such as the copula adalah ’to be’, the prepositions dari ‘of’, the relative pronoun yang, and clause reduction. Effectiveness tied to a reduced clause only undergoes a subtraction of a sentence element such a nominal predicate and the subject of a dependent clause. Importantly, it is shown that effectiveness can be said to be universal (i.e. the analysis is supplemented by the English data) which automatically corroborate and support the effectiveness phenomena in Indonesian.

Cyclicity and Connectivity in Nez Perce Relative Clauses

This article studies two aspects of movement in relative clauses, focusing on evidence from Nez Perce. First, I argue that relativization involves cyclic Ā-movement, even in monoclausal relatives: the relative operator moves to Spec,CP via an intermediate position in an Ā outer specifier of TP. The core arguments draw on word order, complementizer choice, and a pattern of case attraction for relative pronouns.Ā cyclicity of this type suggests that the TP sister of relative C constitutes a phase—a result whose implications extend to an ill-understood corner of the English that-trace effect. Second, I argue that Nez Perce relativization provides new evidence for an ambiguity thesis for relative clauses, according to which some but not all relatives are derived by head raising. The argument comes from connectivity and anticonnectivity in morphological case. A crucial role is played by a pattern of inverse case attraction, wherein the head noun surfaces in a case determined internal to the relative clause. These new data complement the range of existing arguments concerning head raising, which draw primarily on connectivity effects at the syntax-semantics interface.

"의미적" 불협화음에 입각한 관계대명사 quien의 출현 제약에 관한 분석

"의미적" 불협화음에 입각한 관계대명사 quien의 출현 제약에 관한 분석

A Study of Ellipted Subjects Translation Strategies: A Case Study of Thai EFL Learners in an Introductory Translation Course

The primary purpose of the study is to examine how Thai EFL learners translate ellipted subjects in a Thai news article to English and to explore whether there is any significant relationship between the skills of writing and reading in English and translation proficiency. The participants of the study include eighteen Thai freshmen from different intended majors in the Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University. The data used in this research are a test on Thai to English news article translation taken individually by the students during a translation course. Their writing and reading scores from their previous English course are also used to compare their writing and reading skills with their Thai to English translation proficiency. The results revealed that the most frequently adopted strategy for translating omitted Thai subjects among the students was the use of personal pronouns after separating long complex sentences into short simpler ones, followed by the use of conjunctions, preparatory it, and structural transformation. The use of participles and the relative pronoun “who” were the least frequently adopted strategies. Furthermore, there exists a significant relationship between reading in English and translating from Thai to English, but not between writing in English and Thai to English translation. Implications for classroom practices and further research are also discussed.

The Acquisition of the English Relative Pronoun 'Who' by EFL Arab Learners: A Translation Perspective

This paper aims to study Arab students’ use of English relative pronoun ‘who’ via translating statements from their mother tongue (Arabic) into the target language (English). Thirty Saudi adult students, aged 18-20 years old, were asked to translate 20 relative clauses from Arabic into English. The results revealed that the students encountered various problematic areas in the use of relative pronoun 'who', viz. use of personal and possessive relative pronoun, position of relative pronoun, presence of resumptive pronouns in Arabic, absence of duality and plurality of relative pronoun “who”, and use of relative pronouns with prepositional verbs. Such problematic areas were manifested in various errors of omission, addition, selection, word order, and avoidance. The results also showed that the average of the students’ errors in “avoidance, omission, and selection” were significantly higher than (30 %. 25%. and 24% respectively) the average for ‘addition’ and ‘word order’. These errors could be attributed to language transfer, overgeneralization, and ignorance of rules restriction, which were possibly grounded in the lack of exposure to the TL rules and insufficient practice of grammatical activities. Pedagogical implications of this study suggest that instructors should make a good use of the recommendations of contrastive analysis hypothesis (CAH) and Error Analysis (EA). Namely, the students should be made aware of the areas of similarities and differences between English and Arabic practically rather than theoretically. The study stresses the limitations of the findings and directs outlines for future research.

Agreement and the structure of relative clauses

The paper proposes an account of asymmetries in agreement patterns that obtain in restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses headed by hybrid agreement nouns d(j)eca ‘children’, braća ‘brothers’, and gospoda ‘gentry’ in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS). We note that relative clauses headed by hybrid nouns display different possibilities of agreement morphology on the relative pronoun koji/a/e ‘which’, depending, on the one hand, on whether the relative clause is restrictive or non-restrictive and on the other, on the case of the relative pronoun. We argue that the observed differences are the result of a conspiracy of the following factors: (i) hybrid number-agreement nouns introduce a null plural pronoun unspecified for gender (Postal 1966; den Dikken 2001; Torrego and Laga 2015), (ii) all plural case forms of the relative pronoun except for nominative and accusative show full gender syncretism (Alsina and Arsenijević 2012b), and (iii) non-restrictive relative clauses involve a null definite pronoun and attach to the head noun higher than the restrictive relative clauses (Postal 1994; de Vries 2002; 2006). We maintain that the facts discussed in the paper argue against analyses which derive the differences between restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses from their LF representations, rather than from their overt syntax.

Syntactical Relation between the Article and the Relative Pronoun by Using the Intentional Prediction

Syntactical Relation between the Article and the Relative Pronoun by Using the Intentional Prediction

Demonstrativos na România medieval: uma análise comparativa em uma perspectiva funcional

RESUMO Neste trabalho, apresentamos um estudo comparado de demonstrativos na tradução medieval em diferentes línguas (latim, italiano, francês, catalão, espanhol e português) de uma mesma obra (tratado ascético de Isaac de Nínive) em uma perspectiva funcional. Confirmou-se a hipótese de que os sistemas de demonstrativos se reestruturaram, no processo de mudanças linguísticas do latim às línguas românicas, não apenas em termos de formas, mas, sobretudo, em termos de funções: os demonstrativos passaram a exercer funções que, no latim, eram expressas por conjunção, locução explicativa, particípio presente, pronome relativo, pronome anafórico e de identidade, pronome intensivo e mesmo por ausência de recurso formal. Por fim, verificou-se que o contexto em que houve maior retenção do uso de demonstrativos foi o de expressão de contraste imediato.

A Traditional Formula in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite

Lines 256‒7 of the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite can be translated in two ways (τὸν μέν, ἐπὴν δὴ πρῶτον ἴδῃ φάος ἠελίοιο | Νύμφαι μιν θρέ- ψουσιν ὀρεσκῷοι βαθύκολποι). In the first, a comma is usually inserted after μέν, and τὸν is not included in the ἐπὴν clause. In this case, the phrase should be translated “him, when he sees the sunlight, the deep-bosomed mountain nymphs will bring him up”. However, in the second version, the comma is absent and τὸν is included in the ἐπὴν clause. In this case, the phrase should be translated “when the sunlight sees him, the…nymphs will bring him up”. Most editors choose the first interpretation and the main reason is that the phrase “to see the sunlight (φάος ἠελίοιο)” in the first version is very common while the phrase “the sunlight sees”, as in the second version, is very rare. However there are the two most significant objections to the first interpretation. First, verse-initial relative pronouns followed by a subordinating conjunction are elsewhere construed within the subordinate clause. Secondly, the doubled pronoun τόν... μιν is awkward. Moreover, it is possible to refute the editors’ main reason (“the phrase ‘to see the sunlight’ is very common, while the phrase ‘the sunlight sees’ is very rare”) of their choice. There is an example of “the sunlight (φάος ἠελίοιο) sees…”. Also, even though in the combination of φάος ἠελίοιο and a verb which means “see”, φάος ἠελίοιο is usually accusative in other poems, it does not mean that φάος ἠελίοιο is necessarily accusative in this hymn. Some neuter words which are usually accusative in other poems are nominative in this hymn, or vice versa. Therefore, it should be concluded that the poet of the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite included the τὸν in the ἐπὴν clause in line 256 and that we must choose the second version.

Relative clauses: why children have difficulties to comprehend them?

The study aims to describe and interpret the results of testing the speech of Lithuanian children in order to find out whether language-specific features of Lithuanian as a highly inflected language help children grasp the complex syntactic relations between the subject and the object in relative clauses. The investigation has been aimed to test the hypothesis to the effect that depending on the language type, object relative clauses are more difficult to acquire than subject relative clauses (Guasti, Cardinaletti 2003; Utzeri 2007; Brandt, Diessel, Tomasello 2008; O’Grady, Kim, Lee et al. 2011; Benţea 2012).The findings of the research support the hypothesis that relative clauses as objects (the OO type) are more difficult to grasp than those that function as subjects (OS). This claim has been statistically confirmed in the group of 3 – 4.5 year-olds, which had a big difficulty in perceiving the difference between relative clauses functioning as subjects or objects. These findings are in line with claims related to other languages, which demonstrate that children in early childhood, distinguishing between OS or OO, misinterpret the OO type more often (Guasti, Stavrakaki, Arosio 2008). However, when an unusual, strange situation is described, or an unfamiliar verb is used, children tend to assign the same syntactic function to the head noun and the relative pronoun; in such cases the OS clause is interpreted as the OO type. This tendency also supports the parallel-function hypothesis advanced by Tavakolian (1981). In later years children already perceive the difference between the OS and OO type relative clauses, but in a pre-school period misinterpretations of the OO type are quite numerous. Children of schooling age, on the other hand, have no difficulty in interpreting this difference correctly. The results of the present study confirm the assertion that older children grasp the functions of relative clauses and interpret complex structures more easily: they gradually realize that there are two different propositions conveyed in the main and the subordinate clause. It is assumed that children understand and start using relative clauses when their language processing skills have improved, and this happens while they are getting older.In addition to language processing skills, it is important to pay due attention to the frequency of usage principle. Our research findings show that subject relative clauses are more frequent in child-directed speech, and they also appear earlier in a spontaneous child language than object clauses; this is exactly what influences an easier perception of subject relative clauses. Semantic and pragmatic factors have to be mentioned as well: while acquiring a language, children master those grammatical structures where a particular form correlates with a particular meaning more easily (Diessel, Tomassello 2000).It might be assumed that an inflectional system of Lithuanian enables children to easier interpret the syntactic relationship between the main and the relative clause (see, e.g. Arnon 2010); however, the findings of this study allow us to claim that the structure of relative clauses is complex and multilayered, encompassing not only morphological but also semantic and pragmatic factors, which should be investigated more thoroughly in the future. It has also to be stressed that while researching child language it is important to evaluate the influence of adult language, which provides the necessary environment for the child to hear and to understand syntactic constructions of different complexity. Moreover, the assumption that a rich morphological system of a language makes it easier to grasp the complex syntactic functions of sentence elements is corroborated only in part – the findings of the study show that it takes time for Lithuanian children to master correct usage of relative clauses.

The use of attributive clauses in spoken Lithuanian

The syntactic features of spoken Lithuanian are still under-researched due to insufficient data bases, limited technologies, and research methodologies. During the last years, the "Corpus of Spoken Lithuanian" (developed at Vytautas Magnus University; 225,000 words; 80 hours of digitalized audio recordings) has been syntactically annotated, and this has enabled complex automatized syntactic analysis. In the present paper, one of the first such studies is presented and its results are discussed. The corpus linguistics methodology has been employed.The paper deals with the frequency and basic types of attributive clauses in spoken Lithuanian language. The results of the study have highlighted that attributive clauses tend to be more frequent (up to 15% of all subordinate clauses) in public speech, and they are significantly less frequent (up to 7% of all subordinate clauses) in private spontaneous speech.The position of a subordinate clause after the head noun is unmarked and the most frequent in public speech and spontaneous private speech. Consequently, 65% and 88% of all attributive adjectives followed the head noun in private spontaneous speech and in public speech. Since in Lithuanian the word order is not so strict, in private spontaneous speech constructions with a subordinate clause before the head noun are used.The analysis of subordinating conjunctions and relative pronouns has revealed that in public speech the link between a subordinate clause and an independent clause tends to be expressed by the relative pronoun "kuris", "kuri" (‘which’). Namely, in public speech, this pronoun is employed in 85% of all attributive clauses. The number of relative pronouns in private spoken speech reaches only 30%, whereas the subordinating conjunction "kur" (‘where’) has been used in the majority of attributive clauses (51%).The findings of the study reveal the main tendencies in the distribution and frequency of attributive clauses and suggest that the usage of attributive clauses depends, to a large extent, on the register of spoken language.

The effect of theory of mind impairment on language: Referring after right-hemisphere damage

ABSTRACTBackground: Some patients after right-hemisphere damage show difficulty in Theory of Mind (TOM) tasks, namely, in the ability to attribute and reason about mental states of others and of themselves.Aims: We explored how such TOM impairment (aTOMia) following brain damage affects language abilities that are related to TOM. Specifically, we explored the ability of individuals with aTOMia to use and comprehend various referring expressions (e.g., definite and indefinite noun phrases, proper names, and pronouns) according to the speaker’s assessment of the addressee’s knowledge state about the referent.Methods & Procedures: We compared linguistic abilities that depend on the evaluation of shared knowledge, and hence might be affected by TOM impairment, to purely syntactic tasks, unrelated to TOM. TOM-related abilities were assessed using 6 tasks that test the comprehension, production, and judgment of various types of referring expressions. Non-TOM, syntactic, abilities were assessed using 4 tasks of comprehension and production.The participants were 21 Hebrew speakers with right-hemisphere damage aged 25–65 years (mean 52;2), 6 women and 15 men. Twenty of them had a right cerebrovascular accident, and one patient was surgically treated for the removal of a tumour. Fourteen of them were aTOMic, whereas 7 showed normal TOM. We compared the TOM-dependent linguistic abilities of the aTOMic patients to the brain-damaged patients with normal TOM, and to an age-matched control group.Outcomes & Results: The participants with aTOMia performed consistently worse on the TOM-related linguistic tasks than the right-hemisphere-damaged participants with intact-TOM and the healthy control group. They failed to take into account the mental state of the interlocutors and the knowledge that they share in selecting a referring expression. In contrast, their syntactic abilities, which are not dependent on TOM, were intact. Their comprehension of relative clauses, Wh-questions, and object pronouns was normal, and their production of embedded sentences was similar to the controls. The aTOMic and non-aTOMic participants performed similarly to controls on the TOM-independent syntactic tasks.Conclusions: Individuals who have aTOMia following right-hemisphere damage might show specific impairments in language, when the comprehension and production require TOM. An important implication of this study is, thus, that although these individuals do not suffer damage to the language areas in the brain, they should be considered for language evaluation and treatment.

Examining the Learnability of English Relative Clauses: Evidence from Kuwaiti EFL Learners

<p>This study aims to test the extent to which 120 Kuwaiti EFL learners are aware of the structure of relative clauses in English through measuring their ability to produce this structure. It also checks whether the English proficiency level of the participants plays a role in their answers on the test. For this purpose, a sentence combination task was used to measure the participants’ ability to produce correct relative clauses in English. This test was selected in order to examine the types of error made by the participants pertinent to relative clauses in English. The results reveal that Kuwaiti EFL learners may not be fully aware of the formation rules of relative clauses in English (total mean=60.4%). The t-test shows that the English proficiency level affected the participants' answers on the test. Specifically, there were statistically significant differences between the answers of the advanced (76.3%) and intermediate learners (44.4%). The number of errors made by the advanced learners was less than that made by the intermediate learners. Regarding the types of error made by the participants, the most noticeable ones were: deletion of the relative pronoun, wrong relative pronoun, repetitive use of resumptive pronouns, passivisation of the relative clause and problems with the indirect object and genitive relative clauses. The researcher analysed the participants' erroneous answers and provided potential reasons to account for them. Finally, the study concludes with some pedagogical implications and recommendations for further research.</p>

A Contrastive Linguistic Analysis of Arabic Conjunctive Nouns in Their Syntactic Structures and Their English Counterparts = دراسة لغوية تحليلية عن الأسماء الموصولة و تراكيبها الجملية في اللغة العربية و ما يقابلها في اللغة الإنجليزية

Contrastive Analysis | Peculiar and Common Conjunctive Nouns | Relative Pronouns | Restrictive or Identifying Relative Clauses | اللغويات التباينية | الأسماء الموصولة المختصة و المشتركة | ضمائر الوصل | جمل الوصل المحددة أو الحصرية

An Interpretive Lexicon of New Testament Greek: Analysis of Prepositions, Adverbs, Particles, Relative Pronouns, and Conjunctions by G. K. Beale, D. J. Brendsel, and W. A. Ross

This booklet forms an invaluable link in the grammatical-exegetical studies of NT Greek. The purpose of this book is not merely to list various links between statements, but to trace and set out the various logical relationships between statements or propositions (i.e., any clause consisting of subject and predicate) in the NT in order to enhance exegesis. The booklet is thus a taxonomy of functions performed by key Greek connecting words, particles, and other markers (6). It examines and categorises such key words that identify the logical relationships between clauses.

Agreement under Case Matching in Polish co and który Relative Clauses Headed by Numerically Quantified Nouns*

This paper aims to describe subject-verb agreement patterns within Polish co and ktory relative clauses in which the relativized subject head noun (virile and nonvirile) modified by a higher numeral is assigned genitive case. Such subjects in Polish obligatorily induce default 3sg. neut. agreement on the main-clause verbal predicate. However, when the same subject is relativized while also being the relative-clause subject, various agreement options may occur depending on the type of relative marker as well as the grammatical gender of the head noun. In order to examine these agreement possibilities, a survey was conducted measuring Polish native speakers’ acceptability judgments. These patterns suggest that both co and ktory relatives could be derived via a matching analysis because they both allow optionality of agreement in certain environments. Furthermore, this optionality can be accounted for in terms of Case attraction and syncretism of case found in the paradigms of higher numerals and the relative pronoun ktory.

The Acquisition of English Restrictive Relative Clauses by Arab Adult EFL Learners

This study investigates the challenges faced by Arab adult learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in acquiring English restrictive relative clauses (RRCs), as well as the factors that affect the process of acquisition. This issue has received considerable attention in second language (L2) research. The present study discusses the syntactic structure of RRCs in English and Arabic with regard to the use of resumptive pronouns and the use of overt versus covert relative markers as related to the definiteness of the head noun. This study is carried out using an acceptability judgment test as the tool for data collection. A sample of 100 male and female adult Arabic speakers is used with the aim of identifying potential acquisition problems. The results obtained provide further support for first language (L1) transfer. This study concludes that participants accepted the use of resumptive pronouns and preferred the overt relative markers determined by definiteness. It is further discovered that certain factors influenced the acquisition process such as participants’ age, age of learning, and age of immersion. The current study has some pedagogical implications for the teaching of relative clauses in the EFL context. Keywords: English Relative Clauses, Restrictive Relative Clauses, Relative pronoun, Arab Learners of English

Hittite Clause Architecture

The paper aims to provide a comprehensive description of Hittite clause structure.* The picture that emerges is quite different from both the view of Hittite clause architecture as codified in (Hoffner, Melchert 2008) and as documented in the parallel line of research (Luraghi 1990; 2012; forthcoming).The paper focuses on two key features of Hittite clause architecture: (a) preverbal vs. clause initial vs. clause second positions; (b) verb’s positions in the clause, although in-depth study of these aspects involves examination of virtually every significant feature of Hittite syntax.Preverbal position is constituted by wh-words, subordinators, negation markers, negative, indefinite and relative pronouns** as well as some adverbs, only part of these constituents can alternatively be clause initial or second. Contrastive focus is normally preverbal, contrastive topic is clause initial. Two focus positions are distinguished in a Hittite clause*** –high (subjects and objects) and low (adverbs, adverbials). Wh-words, subordinators and relative/indefinite pronouns can also be optionally postverbal. It is significant that only lower focus can be postverbal, never high focus, even though in the canonical word order both high and low focus is preverbal. No information structure difference is detectible between the preverbal and postverbal positions.It is shown that non-canonical positions of the verb can be described by two movements to the left from the canonical clause-final position: (a) to the clause-internal position which follows subject and object, both topical and focal, on the one hand, and precedes what is in the canonical word order the preverbal position,**** on the other, producing V-wh/Neg/Rel, SO-V-wh/Neg/Rel word orders; (b) to the clause leftmost position, producing V-S-O word order. *V-wh/Neg/Rel-S-O or *wh/Neg/Rel-V-S-O word orders are not attested in my ‘diplomatic’ corpus.The last point raises an important question of sociolinguistics of the Hittite language, namely evidence for (idio)lects.

REFERENTIALITY IN NOUN PHRASES AND RELATIVE PRONOUNS

This paper examines the use of who and which with human antecedents in non-restrictive relative clauses. Apart from the cases where the antecedent is a property NP, the contexts that require which are claimed to be those where the antecedent is a non-specifi c NP (Kuno 1970, Declerck 1991). However, the use of which is not limited to these cases. Moreover, there are cases where which is not allowed even though the antecedent is a non-specifi c NP. I will argue that in order to fully account for the choice between who and which, it is crucial to consider not only the referentiality and the specifi city of the antecedent NP but also the semantic function that the relative pronoun plays in the clause, specifi cally, whether it is a referential NP, a property NP, or an NP involving a variable.

Crossover restrictions, A-bar pronouns and discourse antecedents

The difference between weak crossovers and weakest crossovers is usually derived from a distinction between quantifiers and non-quantifiers (Lasnik & Stowell 1991). In this paper I will derive crossover restrictions from a new example set, long movement constructions with Dutch A-bar pronouns. Besides question wh-pronouns and relative pronouns, the set of Dutch A-bar pronouns includes topic d-pronouns not available in English. I will argue that A-bar pronouns constitute a uniform set of quantifiers, be it quantifiers with a discourse antecedent. To explain the present analysis, I take Safir (2004) and Ruys (2004) as a starting point. A major difference between these approaches and my own is that my analysis will make a distinction between strong crossovers as binding failures versus weak and weakest crossovers as a matter of discourse dependency, whereas it is more usual to see a related explanation for strong and weak crossovers versus weakest crossovers.