Relative clauses marked by suprasegmentals

[zompist]

Are there any natlangs where relative clauses are marked not by any lexical or syntactic means, but by suprasegmentals (e.g. tone, intonation)?

(ASL does this, and I'm curious if any spoken languages do it.)

[Legion]

This is, I think, found when a language forms its relative clause with a non-reduction strategy (where the head-noun is kept in sub-clause). There are several non-reduction strategies possible, though the relevent one here is what is called "paratactic relative clause", where the relative clause is in effect syntactically and morphologically identical to a declarative clause, and is juxtaposed to the main clause. WALS gives this example from Amele (Trans-New Guinea, Madang sub-family):

Mel mala heje on ((mel) heu) busali nu-i-a
boy chicken illicit take.3SG.SUBJ-REM.PST boy that run.away go-3SG.SUBJ-TOD.PST
"The boy that stole the chicken ran away."

WALS notes: "What links the two clauses is the rising intonation at the end of the first clause. This indicates that it is not a final clause and is in either a subordinate or coordinate relationship with the following clause."


FWIW, they also give an example of such a construction in English:

"That man just passed by us, he introduced me to the Chancellor of the University yesterday".

[zompist]

Neat, thanks!

[Ser]

...Yeah, I hear this stuff ALL THE TIME in Spanish, French and English. I think it's not usually considered in published grammars because of its colloquial nature or something.

Ouais, cette femme, ouais... ch' travaille a'c son mari de temps en temps (<cue rising intonation), elle me vient d' me dire qu'on s' rencontre en deux heures. Tu crois qu' tu peux v'nir avec ?

Ajá, esta mujer, sí... trabajo con su marido de vez en cuando (<cue rising intonation), me acaba de decir si podíamos encontrarnos en dos horas. ¿Crees que nos puedes acompañar?

I mean, what else would you expect? "Cette femme avec le mari de qui je travaille de temps en temps vient de me dire..."/"Esta mujer con cuyo marido trabajo de vez en cuando..."? (Pfff...)

I think part of the problem is that so far linguistics hasn't been able to deal with intonation successfully (just look at how often it's omitted in the presentation of a language's phonology, even though there's surely some system to talk about), so it's bound to get omitted.

[Gojera]

I vaguely recall from the papers debating recursion in Piraha. IIRC, Everett conceded that while there was no evidence of those structures in the language, that it may exist in the tonal system, which was imperfectly understood. But that's what I sorta recall from reading these several years ago.

[Aurora Rossa]

The grammar of Cherokee that I am reading said something about using a particular tonal shift in verb stems to form subordinate clauses from independent ones. I would need to read through the whole thing and check some stuff for further details, though.

[Melteor]

@zomp: Whoa, wait, ASL does this /how/?

I have wanted to study a language that is intonation-poor and use it as an analogue for a conlang for a while, because of the lack of intonation in so many of the contexts in which langauge is used today. English, despite it's literary use, paradoxically doesn't seem very well suited to this because it apparently relies on suprasegmentals a /lot/, and in transferring to a more literary setting it's speakers rely on something else altogether. Or maybe they dont care, but I refuse to believe it. Descriptions of French intonation seem to be entirely more succinct by comparison, but it's not like I'm well versed in French style rhetoric. You just gave me the idea that maybe I should be studying sign languages. Thanks zomp. :3 Although facial affect isn't possible on the net without smilies or attitudinals a la lojban. This could be something I could use with real time texting and chording on the keyboard.

I wonder what Ithkuil would look like if it included hand signing like in ASL in addition to whatever the vocal tract is doing. Ilaksh would probably be learnable if that were the case.

[zompist]

@zomp: Whoa, wait, ASL does this /how/?

It's a suprasegmental gesture (head tilted back, brows lifted, upper lip tensed) which is maintained for the entirety of the relative clause.

(Interestingly, it's similar to yet another suprasegmental that marks the topic. I'm guessing they're related.)

[Bristel]

@zomp: Whoa, wait, ASL does this /how/?

It's a suprasegmental gesture (head tilted back, brows lifted, upper lip tensed) which is maintained for the entirety of the relative clause.

(Interestingly, it's similar to yet another suprasegmental that marks the topic. I'm guessing they're related.)

These suprasegmentals are an extremely important, yet poorly taught aspect of ASL. (as far as I can tell)

I've picked up on some "suprasegmentals" that involve questions and quotations, but I'm not a fluent ASL user, and wish I had learned more from my mother.

Many CODA (children of deaf adults) that I have met, don't bother using the facial or head gestures, because they think it's extraneous information, but it does add some important and subtle clues to the conversation. It's less likely that ASL students pick up this usage, although I haven't been in an ASL class, so maybe I'm talking out of my butt.

[zompist]

Yeah, I've looked at several popular intros to ASL and most of them are awful linguistically. They skip things like the suprasegmentals and other inflections... most of them just want to teach signs. It's like teaching pidgin Sign. And then there's the book that tried to make it sound like the signs are all lovely, natural expressions... it's as if someone tried to teach Chinese writing by encouraging the students to write idiosyncratic, pretty calligraphy.

The best book I've found is all about the linguistics of ASL, mostly the syntax.

(Note: I don't know ASL at all. I can tell when things are oversimplified though.)

[Imralu]

Auslan (Australian Sign Language) does the same thing as ASL, as far as I can work out. I say as far as I can work out because although I've been learning Auslan for over two years now, we've still never actually been taught any useful grammar. It's a bloody stupid curriculum.

But anyway, as far as I've found out, relative clauses are also always topicalised, ie. if you have a noun that is modified by a relative clause, the whole thing must be moved to the beginning of the sentence and marked as the topic. Who knows what happens when you have two relative clauses in a sentence, such as "People who can afford to buy a house shouldn't feel superior to people who can't (afford to (buy a house)). I'm going to ask one of my teachers that this week.

[Xephyr]

The best book I've found is all about the linguistics of ASL, mostly the syntax.

Was that "Grammar, Gesture, and Meaning in American Sign Language"? I read half of that a couple years ago, and it was Decent.

[zompist]

Same guy, different book: American Sign Language Syntax.

[Terra]

It's a suprasegmental gesture (head tilted back, brows lifted, upper lip tensed) which is maintained for the entirety of the relative clause.

(Interestingly, it's similar to yet another suprasegmental that marks the topic. I'm guessing they're related.)

What if there's a relative clause nested within a relative clause? Is the head tilted back farther, etc? Assuming it can, how deep can it nest before the gesture stops changing?

[Melteor]

Auslan (Australian Sign Language) does the same thing as ASL, as far as I can work out. I say as far as I can work out because although I've been learning Auslan for over two years now, we've still never actually been taught any useful grammar. It's a bloody stupid curriculum.

But anyway, as far as I've found out, relative clauses are also always topicalised, ie. if you have a noun that is modified by a relative clause, the whole thing must be moved to the beginning of the sentence and marked as the topic. Who knows what happens when you have two relative clauses in a sentence, such as "People who can afford to buy a house shouldn't feel superior to people who can't (afford to (buy a house)). I'm going to ask one of my teachers that this week.

Couldn't you just say "to the other people"? Because its set up like a tautology that should work right?

[Trebor]

Are there any natlangs where relative clauses are marked not by any lexical or syntactic means, but by suprasegmentals (e.g. tone, intonation)?

Kinyarwanda:

Tones are lexical, morphological and syntactical. Lexical tones differentiate words which look alike segmentally as shown in (a), morphological tones play the role that segmental morphemes are assigned in other languages as illustrated in (b), whereas syntactic tones are assigned depending on where the word bearing the tone occurs in the noun phrase, verb phrase or the sentence as shown in (c).
a. inda 'stomach'<>indá 'louse' , ino 'toe' <>inó 'here'
b.basoma 'they read'<>basomá 'who read' <>básoma 'when they read'
c. baraaza bagakóra 'they come and work'<> baraaza bagakora akazi 'they come and do the
work'
In b the lack of tone shows the present tense, the high tone on the second syallable shows that the verb is a relative clause whereas the high tone on the first syllable of the verb stem shows that the verb is a temporal or conditional clause. In (c ) the verb loses its high tone because it is followed by a complement.

Edit: To clarify--relative conjunctions 'who/that/which' don't exist at all, so 'girls who read books' in English is (adopting Alexandre Kimenyi's technical orthography) <abakóobwa basomá igitabo> [a_LBa_Lko:_Fbga_L Ba_Lso_Lma_H i_LJ\i_Lta_LBo_L] in Kinyarwanda. (I'm still a complete beginner, so can't give a more sophisticated example.)