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Article published In:
Studies in Language
Vol. 43:4 (2019) ► pp.997–1014
News from the Field

The relative pronoun strategy

New data from southern New Guinea

ORCID logo | University of New England

The Relative Pronoun strategy is commonly used for relativization in European languages such as English – for example: The woman [ who won the lottery ] is my neighbour. In this strategy the head nominal (here the woman) is indicated inside the relative clause by a clause-initial pronominal element (the relative pronoun, here who). The Relative Pronoun strategy has been characterized as an exclusively European areal feature (e.g. Comrie 1998). This article describes this strategy in more detail, as well as previous accounts of its distribution, and goes on to demonstrate that the same strategy is also found in Nama, a Papuan language of southern New Guinea.

Keywords: relativisation, relative pronoun, European languages, Nama
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • 1.Defining the relative pronoun strategy
  • 2.The relative pronoun strategy outside Europe
  • 3.Relative clauses in Nama
    • 3.1Background: The language, contact and basic structure
    • 3.2The relative pronoun strategy in Nama
    • 3.3The relative pronoun strategy in other southern New Guinea languages
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 23 January 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.18040.sie
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