Article published in:
Studies in Language
Vol. 46:1 (2022) ► pp. 220–257

The development of locative relative markers

From typology to sociolinguistics (and back)

| University of Bologna
| KU Leuven
The accessibility hierarchy was first proposed by Keenan & Comrie (1977) to describe the cross-linguistic distribution of relative markers in terms of likelihood of relativization of different syntactic roles. The hierarchy is also commonly believed to reflect constraints on possible changes in the domain of relativization. For example, the hierarchy predicts that locative relatives that develop into general relativizers should expand their functional range in a step-by-step fashion from lower to higher roles. In this paper, we revise existing claims about the diachrony of locative relatives. In doing so, we survey known cases of locative relatives that develop into general relativizers and we also discuss data from linguistic variation in non-standard varieties in European languages, with a focus on social variation in Italian. As we argue, data from Italian suggests that another possible cline of development of locative relatives should be acknowledged, that is, locative > concern > subject.
Keywords: diachronic typology, relative clause, locative relative, language variation, sociolinguistic variation, accessibility hierarchy
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The typology of relative clauses
    • 2.1Definition and parameters of variation
    • 2.2The accessibility hierarchy
  • 3.Locative relatives cross-linguistically
    • 3.1The encoding of locative relatives and the AH
    • 3.2The origin of locative relatives
    • 3.3The functional extension of locative relatives
  • 4.From interlinguistic to intralinguistic variation
    • 4.1Standard and non-standard uses of locative relatives in the languages of Europe
    • 4.2 Dove in social varieties of Italian
      • 4.2.1Data and methods
      • 4.2.2Results
  • 5.From locative to subject (via concern): A possible pathway of change
    • 5.1.1Stage I: locative > concern
    • 5.1.2Stage II: concern > subject
    • 5.1.3Revising the locative > relative development
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 21 May 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.20013.bal
References
Ahland, Coleen Anne
2012 A grammar of Northern and Southern Gumuz. Eugene: University of Oregon PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
Auer, Peter & Pfänder, Stefan
2007 Multiple retractions in spoken French and spoken German. A contrastive study in oral performance styles. Cahiers de praxématique 481. 57–84. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Alfonzetti, Giovanna
2002 La relativa non-standard. Italiano popolare o italiano parlato? Palermo: Centro di Studi Filologici e Linguistici Siciliani.Google Scholar
Andrews, Avery
2007 Relative clauses. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description. Vol. 2, Complex constructions, 2nd edn, 206–236. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ballarè, Silvia & M. Silvia Micheli
2018 Usi di dove nell’italiano contemporaneo: costruzioni relative e dinamiche di ristandardizzazione. Linguistica e Filologia 381. 29–56.Google Scholar
Ballarè, Silvia, Massimo Cerruti & Eugenio Goria
2019 Variazione diastratica nel parlato di giovani: il caso delle costruzioni relative. In Bruno Moretti, Aline Kunz, Silvia Natale & Etna Krakenberger (eds.), Le tendenze dell’italiano contemporaneo rivisitate. Atti del 52esimo congresso internazionale di studi della Società di Linguistica Italiana (SLI), Bern, 6–8 September 2018, 75–94. Milano: Officinaventuno.Google Scholar
Bernini, Giuliano
1989 Tipologia delle frasi relative italiane e Romanze. In Fabio Foresti, Elena Rizzi & Paola Benedini (eds.), L’italiano tra le lingue romanze. Atti del XX Congresso Internazionale della Società di Linguistica Italiana (Bologna, 25–27 settembre 1986), 85–98. Roma: Bulzoni.Google Scholar
Berruto, Gaetano
1983 L’italiano popolare e la semplificazione linguistica. Vox Romanica 421. 38–79.Google Scholar
Berruto, Gaetano & Massimo Cerruti
2015 Manuale di sociolinguistica. Torino: UTET.Google Scholar
Brook, Marisa
2011 One of those situations where a relative pronoun becomes a complementizer: A case of grammaticalization in progress… again. In Lisa Armstrong (ed.), Proceedings of the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Linguistic Association, 1–7.Google Scholar
Cerruti, Massimo
2017 Changes from below, changes from above. Relative constructions in contemporary Italian. In Massimo Cerruti, Claudia Crocco & Stefania Marzo (eds.), Towards a new standard. Theoretical and empirical studies on the restandardization of Italian, 32–61. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cerruti, Massimo & Silvia Ballarè
2020 Parlato: corpus del parlato di Torino. Bollettino dell’Atlante Linguistico Italiano 441. 13–38.Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo
1988 La frase relativa. In Lorenzo Renzi, Giampaolo Salvi & Anna Cardinaletti (eds.), Grande grammatica italiana di consultazione, Vol. 11, 443–503. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard & Tania Kuteva
2013 Relativization Strategies. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds.), The World Atlas of Language Structures Online, Chapter s8. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Available at Available online at http://​wals​.info​/chapter​/s8 (last access 10 April 2021).
Crahe, Maxime-Morvan
2013 Le breton de Languidic: étude phonétique, morphologique et syntaxique d’un sous-dialecte du breton vannetais. Rennes: Université Rennes 2 PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
Cristofaro, Sonia
2003 Subordination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2017 Implicational universals and dependencies. In Nick J. Enfield (ed.), Dependencies in language: On the causal ontology of linguistic systems, 9–22. Berlin: Language Science Press.Google Scholar
Cristofaro, Sonia & Anna Giacalone Ramat
2007 Relativization strategies in the languages of Europe. In Paolo Ramat & Elisa Roma (eds.), Europe and the Mediterranean as linguistic areas: Convergencies from a historical and typological perspective, 63–93. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cristofaro, Sonia & Fernando Zúñiga
2018 Synchronic vs. diachronic approaches to typological hierarchies. In Sonia Cristofaro & Fernando Zúñiga (eds.), Typological hierarchies in synchrony and diachrony, 4–27. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
D’Achille, Paolo
1990 Sintassi del parlato e tradizione scritta della lingua italiana. Analisi di testi dalle origini al secolo XVIII. Roma: Bonacci.Google Scholar
de Vries, Mark
2002 The syntax of relativization. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
2005 The fall and rise of universals on relativization. Journal of Universal Language 61. 125–157. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
DeLancey, Scott
2002 Relativization and Nominalization in Bodic. In Patrick Chew (ed.), Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: Special Session on Tibeto-Burman and Southeast Asian Linguistics, 55–72. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
De Roberto, Elisa
2008 Le proposizioni relative con antecedente in italiano antico. Roma / Sorbonne: Università Roma Tre / Université Paris IV, Sorbonne PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
Diessel, Holger, & Michael Tomasello
2005 A new look at the acquisition of relative clauses. Language 81(4). 882–906. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Enfield, Nick J.
2007 A grammar of Lao. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fleischer, Jürg
2004 A typology of relative clauses in German dialects. In Bernd Kortmann (ed.), Dialectology meets typology: Dialect grammar from a cross-linguistic perspective, 211–244. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
2005 Relativsätze in den Dialekten des Deutschen: Vergleich und Typologie. Linguistik online 24(3). 171–186.Google Scholar
Fox, Barbara A.
1987 The Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy reinterpreted: Subject primacy or the absolutive hypothesis? Language 63(4). 856–870. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Givón, Talmy
1987 Beyond background and foreground. In Russel S. Tomlin (ed.), Coherence and Grounding in Discourse, 175–188. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2012 Toward a diachronic typology of relative clause. In Bernard Comrie & Zarina Estrada-Fernández (eds.), Relative clauses in languages of the Americas: A typological overview, 1–26. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Götze, Lutz & Ernest W. B. Hess-Lüttich
1999 Grammatik der deutschen Sprache. Munich: Bertelsmann.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin
2019a Differential place marking and differential object marking. Language Typology and Universals (STUF) 72(3). 313–334. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2019b Can cross-linguistic regularities be explained by change constraints? In Karsten Schmidtke-Bode, Natalia Levshina, Susanne Maria Michaelis & Ilja A. Seržant (eds.), Explanation in typology: Diachronic sources, functional motivations and the nature of the evidence, 1–23. Berlin: Language Science Press.Google Scholar
Hawkins, John A.
1999 Processing complexity and filler-gap dependencies across grammars. Language 75(2). 244–285. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Heine, Bernd & Tania Kuteva
2002 World lexicon of grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hendery, Rachel
2012 Relative clauses in time and space: A case study in the methods of diachronic typology. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Himmelmann, Nikolaus P.
2004 Lexicalization and grammaticization: opposite or orthogonal? In Walter Bisang, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann & Björn Wiemer (eds.), What makes grammaticalization: A look from its fringes and its components, 21–42. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Holmstedt, Robert D.
2002 The relative clause in Biblical Hebrew: A linguistic analysis. Madison: University of Wisconsin PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
Holton, Gary
2006 The relational noun marker in Tobelo (Northeast Halmaheran). In Tenth International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics. https://​sil​-philippineslanguages​.org​/ical​/papers​.html
Hopper, Paul J. & Elizabeth C. Traugott
2003 Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney, Geoffrey K. Pullum & Peter Peterson
2002 Relative constructions and unbounded dependencies. In Rodney Huddleston & Geoffrey K. Pullum (eds.), The Cambridge grammar of the English language, 1031–1096. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Huehnergard, John
1997 A grammar of Akkadian. Winona Lake (Indiana): Eisenbrauns.Google Scholar
Joseph, Brian D.
1983 Relativization in Modern Greek: another look at the accessibility hierarchy constraints. Lingua 60(1). 1–24. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Keenan, Edward
1985 Relative clauses. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description. Vol. 2, Complex constructions, 141–170. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward & Bernard Comrie
1977 Noun phrase accessibility and Universal Grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 81. 63–99.Google Scholar
1979 Noun phrase accessibility revisited. Language 55(3). 649–664. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Keenan, Edward & Sarah Hawkins
1987 The psychological validity of the accessibility hierarchy. In Edward Keenan (ed.), Universal grammar: 15 essays, 60–88. London/Sydney: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Klamer, Marian
1998 A grammar of Kambera. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kruspe, Nicole
2004 A grammar of Semelai. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kullavanijaya, Pranee
2008 A Historical Study of /thîi/ in Thai. In Anthony V. N. Diller, Jerold A. Edmonson & Yongxian Luo (eds.), The Tai-Kadai languages, 445–467. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kuteva, Tania, Bernd Heine, Bo Hong, Haiping Long, Heiko Narrog, Seongha Rhee
2019 World lexicon of grammaticalization. 2nd, extensively revised & updated edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William
1972 Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
1994 The study of change in progress: observations in real time. In William Labov (ed.), Principles of linguistic change: Internal factors, 73–112. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud
1994 Informative structure and sentence form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Larrivée, Pierre & Marie Skrovech
2016 Les relatives en français vernaculaire. SHS Web of Conferences, Vol. 271 2016, 5e Congrès Mondial de Linguistique Française. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lehmann, Christian
1986 On the typology of relative clauses. Linguistics 241. 663–680. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lidz, Liberty A.
2010 A descriptive grammar of Yongning Na (Mosuo). Austin: University of Texas at Austin PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
Luraghi, Silvia
2016 The mapping of space onto the domain of benefaction and some unpredicted trends in semantic change. Linguistics 54(2). 339–379. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Luzi, Eleonora
2012 Relativization strategies in SLA. Second Language Research 24(4). 443–476. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mackridge, Peter
1985 The Modern Greek language. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Matthiessen, Chrisitan & Sandra A. Thompson
1988 The structure of discourse and ‘subordination’. In John Haiman & Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), Clause combining in grammar and discourse, 275–329. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Maxwell, Dan
1982 Implications of NP accessibility for diachronic syntax. Folia Linguistica Historica 31. 135–152. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Michaelis, Suzanne, Martin Haspelmath & the APiCS consortium
2013 Subject relative clauses. In Susanne Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.), The atlas of pidgin and creole language structures, Chapter 92. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available at https://​apics​-online​.info​/parameters​/92​.chapter​.html (last access 10 April 2021).
Mithun, Marianne
2018 Deconstructing teleology: The place of synchronic usage patterns among processes of diachronic development. In Sonia Cristofaro & Fernando Zúñiga (eds.), Typological hierarchies in synchrony and diachrony, 111–128. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Murelli, Adriano
2011 Relative constructions in European non-standard varieties. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Nicholas, Nick
1998 The story of pu: The grammaticalisation in space and time of a Modern Greek complementiser. Melbourne: University of Melbourne.Google Scholar
Poletto, Cecilia & Emanuela Sanfelici
2017 Relative clauses. In Andreas Dufter & Elizabeth Stark (eds.), Manual of Romance morphosyntax and syntax, 804–846. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Price, Glanville
2008 A comprehensive French grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Radford, Andrew
2019 Relative clauses: Structure and variation in everyday English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne
1984 Towards a typology of relative-clause formation strategies in Germanic. In Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Historical Syntax, 437–470. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Rubin, Aaron D.
2005 Studies in Semitic grammaticalization. Winona Lake (Indiana): Eisenbrauns. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Serianni, Luca
2006 [1989] Grammatica italiana: italiano comune e lingua letteraria. Suoni, forme, costrutti. Torino: UTET.Google Scholar
Shagal, Ksenia
2019 Participles: A typological study. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Shibatani, Masayoshi
1991 Grammaticization of topic into subject. In Elizabeth C. Traugott & Bernd Heine (eds.), Approaches to grammaticalization, Vol. 2, Types of grammatical markers, 93–134. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Shirai, Yasuhiro & Hiromi Ozeki
2007 The acquisition of relative clauses and the noun phrase accessibility hierarchy: A universal in SLA? Introduction. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 29(2).155–167.Google Scholar
Smits, Helena J.
2017 A grammar of Lumun. Leiden: Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
Song, Jae Jung
2002 Linguistic typology and language acquisition: The accessibility hierarchy and relative clauses. Language Research 38(2). 729–756.Google Scholar
Stolz, Thomas, Sander Lestrade & Stolz Christel
2014 The crosslinguistics of zero-marking of spatial relations. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Topping, Donald M.
1973 Chamorro reference grammar. Honolulu: University of Hawaii. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wang, Peter, Robert Hunt, Jeff McGriff & Richard E. Elkins
2006 The Grammar of Matigsalug Manobo. The Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington. Available at https://​www​.sil​.org​/resources​/archives​/53940 (last access 10 April 2021).
Watke, Bruce K. & Michael P. O’Connor
1990 An introduction to Biblical Hebrew syntax. Winona Lake (Indiana): Eisenbrauns.Google Scholar
Wheeler, Max, Alan Yates & Nicolau Dols
1999 Catalan: A comprehensive grammar. London: Routledge. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Yap, Foong Ha, Karen Grunow-Hårsta & Janick Wrona
2011 Introduction. In Foong Ha Yap, Karen Grunow-Hårsta & Janick Wrona (eds.), Nominalization strategies in Asian languages, 1–60. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar

Corpora

American National Corpus
americannationalcorpus​.org
Enquêtes Sociolinguistiques à Orléans (ESLO Corpus)
eslo​.huma​-num​.fr
ParlaTO Corpus
corpusparlato​.com
Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American Eglish (SBC)
linguistics​.ucsb​.edu​/research​/santa​-barbara​-corpus