Relative clauses in languages of the Americas: A typological overview ed. by Bernard Comrie, Zarina Estrada-Fernández (review)

Bernard Comrie and Zarina Estrada-Fernández are well-known specialists in matters of relative clauses and Uto-Aztecan languages, respectively. Their volume divides into three parts. The first comprises articles on theoretical and diachronic aspects of relative clause formation. The remaining articles are devoted to one language each and are subdivided into Part 2, focusing on Uto-Aztecan languages, and Part 3, dealing with other American languages. The relative clauses described belong to the following positional types: the Hup relative clause (RC) is prenominal; Yaqui, Pima Bajo, Northern Paiute, Toba, Yucatec, and Tuscarora have a postnominal RC; and the Seri and Gavião RCs are circumnominal. No adjoined RC is reported on in this volume.

In his contribution on diachronic typology, Talmy Givón hypothesizes that there are two diachronic pathways by which relative constructions originate, both of them reductive in nature. The first condenses a sequence of two erstwhile independent clauses into a complex sentence of the clause-chaining type; the second presupposes a nominalized clause and combines this in apposition with a nominal group. In both cases, an original intonation break is smoothed out so that the relative clause may become restrictive.

Tania Kuteva and Bernard Comrie study the use of markers of relative clauses whose subject is relativized, analyzing a large sample of creole languages. On the background of crosslinguistic variation that comprises a gamut from zero to five markers in general, creole languages are special in showing, in the vast majority, exactly one marker; that is, their position on the gamut is close to the lower end of structural complexity. Again, relative constructions developed in language contact generally show more formal complexity the more intense the contact, which thus conforms to general expectations on increasing complexity in contact situations. If creole languages arise out of language contact, their one-marker principle requires an explanation. The explanation offered by the authors is that, unlike other languages coming into contact, creole languages arise out of pidgins that employ no marker at all. They have just had the time to do the first step of pairing a function with a form.

Robert D. Van Valin intends to show that role and reference grammar can account with equal simplicity for both externally and internally headed relative clauses without needing to assume null elements or movement processes. He formulates rules that link the syntactic to a semantic representation, exemplifying with one externally and one internally headed relative clause.

The second part of the volume starts with two articles on the Yaqui (northwest Mexico) relative clause. Albert Álvarez González shows that it is essentially an oriented nominalized clause that may equally function as an NP or as an adjectival attribute. The relative clause retains a relatively high degree of sententiality (‘finiteness’), virtually the only internal symptom of nominalization being the genitive on the subject of the relative clause. The distribution of such a nominalized clause, however, is essentially the same as that of a noun or NP. Since its combination with a head nominal is mere juxtaposition, Álvarez argues that it is not necessary to posit relative clause formation as a grammatical operation of Yaqui. Lilián Guerrero describes a rather heterogeneous set of data. The bulk of her article is devoted to a comparison of relative clauses with complement clauses, emphasizing the similarity between a relative clause and the complement of a verb of direct perception.

The contribution by Zarina Estrada-Fernández pursues the fate of the Pima-Bajo (northwest Mexico) clause-final relativizer from its prehistorical origin to its most recent realization. For the reconstruction, the author assumes a combination of a participial clause ended by a participle suffix with a main clause starting with a resumptive demonstrative. The relativizer would then originate from...