Re: Creative ways to form relative clauses?

On Sat, 2008-12-20 at 08:39 -0500, Daniel Bowman wrote:

> I've been a lurker on the forums for some time, but I thought I'd break my
> silence with a question that's been vexing me for some time:  How should my
> conlang form relative clauses?
Welcome, Daniel!

Basically, you have five options:

1. No relative clauses, as (if my memory serves me correctly) in
Australian languages.
"A man hit me yesterday. I hate that man."

2. The retained-noun type, generally used in India, but also in parts of
West Africa.
*"I hate that man, which man hit me yesterday."

3. The conjunction and pronoun type. This is the commonest.
*"I hate the man that [conjunction] he hit me yesterday."

4. The relative-pronoun type. This is particularly European, although
found elsewhere.
"I hate the man who hit me yesterday."

5. The gap type. This is usual in verb-final languages.
*"I hate the hit me yesterday man."
"That is the man I bought my flat from."

The further down the list you go, the more restricted the use. Thus
English has type (5) in certain circumstances only. Catalan has the
relative pronoun if it is nominative or accusative, but otherwise type
(3).

My Liburnes is type (3):

«Il hòmin qui ni haj comprad la caza.» "The man whose house I bought."
«Il hòmin qui li haj vendud la caza.» "The man to whom I sold my house."

Incidentally, there was a conference on relative clauses at the
University of Chicago in the 90s, and they published the proceedings as
"The Chicago Which Hunt"! I keep meaning to read that. There's a chapter
in volume 2 of that conlanger's treasure "Language Typology and
Syntactic Description".