Headless Relative Clauses in Mesoamerican Languages

This paper is the first investigation of relative clauses (RCs) in Wenzhounese (a variety of Wu spoken in Southern Zhejiang province, China). We provide a raising analysis of Wenzhounese RCs and discuss two main families of hypotheses for the subject preference observed in postnominal RCs, namely the linear intervention hypothesis and the hierarchical intervention hypothesis. To examine the validity of these two hypotheses, we tested fifty-six children (aged 3–6) and twenty-six adults on their production of Wenzhounese RCs. Head-external (prenominal) RCs, head-internal RCs, doubling RCs and headless RCs were elicited. The results show a subject preference in the production of head-external and headless RCs in both groups, but an object preference in the production of head-internal and doubling RCs. These findings support the notion that intervention in movement chains is computed hierarchically, not linearly.

The goal of this paper is to give a typological overview of the main characteristics of restrictive relative clauses in Gavar. The analysis is based on 572 examples of relative clauses taken from a corpus of 59 interlinearised texts, elicited examples and example sentence provided for lexical items. It is observed that relative clauses in Gavar are externally headed, with the head noun, when present, preceding the relative clause. Headless relative clauses are also possible. The relative clause begins with a relative marker. Subject relative clauses are marked with the relative marker ma whose tone varies between high and low. Non-subject relative clauses are marked with relative marker ndə́ (ná) which always carries a high tone. There is no restriction on the grammatical roles that can be relativised. Subject, direct and indirect object, oblique, genitive and object of comparison relative clauses are all possible. The gap strategy is used to encode NPrel within a subject relative clause. A resumptive pronoun is frequently but not always used to encode NPrel within a non-subject relative clause. Gavar does not have special ‘relative’ tense/aspect marking, but perfective marking on the verb is disallowed in relative clauses. The existential status of the head noun is coded by the use versus the absence of a post-relative demonstrative. Subject relative clauses with an adjectival predicate form the basis of the comparative construction in Gavar. Non-subject relative clause constructions have developed into various types of adverbial clauses.

We argue that Abaza, a polysynthetic language from the Northwest Caucasian family, exhibits a syntax-semantics mapping that has not been observed in any other languages before. We show that Abaza lacks wh-words and, as a consequence, matrix and embedded wh- interrogative clauses, and conveys direct and indirect content question meaning by means of headless relative clauses. We propose a compositional semantic analysis of these headless relative clauses that assigns them the same meaning as concealed question DPs, i.e. individual concepts. When occurring as matrix clauses and conveying direct question meaning, these headless relative clauses require the relative verbal form to contain a clause typing affix from a specific set. We show that these affixes cannot be analyzed as “incorporated” or “cliticized” wh- words, but rather as operators turning individual concepts into questions, i.e., sets of propositions.

We argue that existing syntactic typologies of relative clauses which distinguish between two categories of relatives, i.e. headed and headless relative clauses, based on the presence or absence of head NP in the main clause, do not include externally headed relative clauses with reduced and light heads such as demonstratives, pronominal person clitics, classifiers, plural number markers, etc. The Ashéninka Perené data show that the third syntactic category of intermediate heads such as demonstratives, indefinite terms, numerals, pronominal verbal clitics and classifiers should be included in syntactic typology of relatives to more accurately represent variability of headed relatives in individual languages.

This chapter surveys headless relative clauses (i.e. ones with no overt head noun) in Yucatec Maya, an indigenous language of southern Mexico. For Indo-European languages, discussion of such constructions has focused on “free relative clauses”—those with only a bare wh-word in place of a head—and to a lesser extent, “light-headed” relative clauses⎯those with a dedicated set of pronominal elements in place of a head noun. In contrast, Yucatec Maya is shown to allow for four different kinds of surface headless relative clause forms depending on the presence or absence of a wh-word and the presence or absence of a determiner, quantifier, or other D-element. With respect to free relative clauses, whereas many more well-studied Indo-European languages have morpho-syntactically distinct constructions for definite and indefinite free relative clauses (e.g. with an infinitive or subjunctive form in the latter case), Yucatec Maya is shown to have a single morpho-syntactic form whose (in)definiteness is determined by syntactic context.

This article presents an overview of the contribution of brain imaging techniques to the study of human language by first reviewing previous historical approaches to the study of the relationships between language and the brain. A brief introduction to modern brain imaging techniques follows, thereafter describing several concrete examples of contributions of these techniques to better know the human language, as well as to vivid debates into the linguistic and the psycholinguistic disciplines. This overview finishes with a comment on the present and the future of studying language with brain imaging techniques. It is concluded that these techniques are playing an essential role in the understanding of human language.

This article describes a previously unknown set of ordinal numbers in Menominee, originally recorded in the mid-nineteenth century by the missionary Antoine-Marie Gachet. The numbers are complex, and follow two broad (but related) patterns. Both appear to be participial forms of verbs of quantity, functioning as headless relative clauses. The article provides an analysis of all elements of the ordinal numbers, and because one of the goals of the article is to contribute to Menominee language revitalization, suggests reconstructions for the missing forms.

This paper examines the syntax of nominal modification in the Ho language, with a specific exploration of relativization. Relative constructions across languages, and even within a particular language, manifest different strategies, such as participial relative clauses, internally headed relative clauses, and externally headed relative clauses. The analysis presented here focuses on participial and correlative clauses, aiming to derive a common logical form for equivalent sentences. Furthermore, the study aims to illustrate the diverse positions that can be modified by both participial and correlative clauses in accordance with the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy. As posited by Keenan and Comrie (1977), this hierarchy hierarchically relativizes different noun phrase positions as a universal sequence: subject > direct object > indirect object > oblique object > object of genitive > object of comparison. Therefore, this paper seeks to assess the validity of this hierarchy in both participial and correlative clause constructions in the Ho language.

Studies in Language (SL) provides a forum for the discussion of issues in contemporary linguistics, with a particular focus on empirically well-grounded research in the functionalist tradition that recognizes the diversity and variability of human languages and of communication patterns, the historical dynamics of languages, and the embedding of language in both social practices and cognition. Studies in Language provides for three sections and types of contributions: Regular articles: Regular articles are expected to adopt a cross-linguistic or comparative perspective and to advance our understanding of human language as such, in terms of state-of-the-art theories, methods, and analytical models or frameworks. Regular articles on one individual language are published only to the extent that they make a contribution of general interest. News from the Field: SL welcomes short contributions that report on new discoveries in little-known or endangered languages, emphasizing description over theory and comparison. Contributions to this special section typically derive from original fieldwork and are expected to provide concise and well-substantiated analyses of linguistic phenomena that have not been noticed so far and for which the wider theoretical implications have yet to be established. Discussions: SL publishes short position papers that outline or take issue with general visions of the field or address current developments. Contributions to this section may lead to response articles in the same or in a subsequent issue and one (very short) reply by the original contributor. All submissions are subject to double-blind reviewing. SL publishes its articles Online First.

A bstract This study presents a revised analysis of evidentiality in Ancash Quechua in a contrastive approach with Common Tibetan. After a brief introduction to both languages and their affiliation, we provide an overview of the Quechua verb as well as the evidential and epistemic systems in this language family. Then we present the previous linguistic descriptions of Quechua’s evidential and epistemic markers, and a revised analysis of the semantic-cognitive values of the evidential =mi . This study shows that the evidential =mi in Ancash Quechua in fact encodes both information source and focus. Unlike in Common Tibetan, the evidential markers are highly restricted in interrogative clauses. However, the perspective shift indicated by evidential markers in interrogative clauses is attested in this language. Largely ignored in previous studies, the absence of overt evidentials plays a significant role in the system, since it may trigger evidential inferences, a mirative reading, an indication of the speaker’s lesser commitment and a lack of definiteness. The comparison of the main differences between the evidential systems of Ancash Quechua and Common Tibetan allows us to shed new light on the distinct evidential notions of information source and information access from a typological point of view.

METHODS FOR SPECIFYING FAMILIES OF FORMAL LANGUAGES — PAST-PRESENT-FUTURE

This article provides new observations on où est-ce que (lit. ‘where is-it that’) in headed relatives (i.e. relatives with a nominal antecedent) in Quebec French from two different data sources (corpus research and acceptability judgements). These observations will be interpreted as an indicator for a more advanced stage of grammaticalisation of où est-ce que in this variety of French than in its European counterpart. Moreover, it will be shown that où est-ce que is more advanced in grammaticalisation in Quebec French than qu’est-ce que (lit. ‘what is-it that’). I will argue that this contrast is due to the adverbial function of où est-ce que , which leads to structural ambiguity between appositive and restrictive relative clauses. This ambiguity creates the possibility of structural reanalysis of clauses beginning with où est-ce que as headed relative clauses. I will support this analysis diachronically by comparison with other languages and with a related form oùsque , which is diachronically related to où est-ce que and has a distribution similar to that of où est-ce que , in that it is also used in headed relatives. The article is structured as follows. In Section 1 , I will describe the distribution of où est-ce que and related forms in French both synchronically and diachronically and present the steps of grammaticalisation that have been undergone by où est-ce que . In Section 2 , I present new data from Quebec French that will show a more advanced stage of grammaticalisation of où est-ce que in Quebec French. In Section 3 , I suggest an informal analysis to explain this new observation. Section 4 provides a detailed analysis of the informal suggestion based on a formal distinction between restrictive and appositive uses of relative clauses. Section 5 offers a summary and discussion.

Natural language processing (NLP) has significantly advanced our ability to model and interact with human language through technology. However, these advancements have disproportionately benefited high-resource languages with abundant data for training complex models. Low-resource languages, often spoken by smaller or marginalized communities, need help realizing the full potential of NLP applications. The primary challenges in developing NLP applications for low-resource languages stem from the need for large, well-annotated datasets, standardized tools, and linguistic resources. This scarcity of resources hinders the performance of data-driven approaches that have excelled in high-resource settings. Further, low-resource languages frequently exhibit complex grammatical structures, diverse vocabularies, and unique social contexts, which pose additional challenges for standard NLP techniques. Innovative strategies are emerging to address these challenges. Researchers are actively collecting and curating datasets, even utilizing community engagement platforms to expand data resources. Transfer learning, where models pre-trained on high-resource languages are adapted to low-resource settings, has shown significant promise. Multilingual models like Multilingual Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (mBERT) and Cross Lingual Models (XLM-R), trained on vast quantities of multilingual data, offer a powerful avenue for cross-lingual knowledge transfer. Additionally, researchers are exploring integrating multimodal approaches, combining textual data with images, audio, or video, to enhance NLP performance in low-resource language scenarios. This survey covers applications like part-of-speech tagging, morphological analysis, sentiment analysis, hate speech detection, dependency parsing, language identification, discourse annotation guidelines, question answering, machine translation, information retrieval, and predictive authoring for augmentative and alternative communication systems. The review also highlights machine learning approaches, deep learning approaches, Transformers, and cross-lingual transfer learning as practical techniques. Developing practical NLP applications for low-resource languages is crucial for preserving linguistic diversity, fostering inclusion within the digital world, and expanding our understanding of human language. While challenges remain, the strategies outlined in this survey demonstrate the ongoing progress and highlight the potential for NLP to empower communities that speak low-resource languages and contribute to a more equitable landscape within language technology.

This research aims (1) to comprehend the relative construction of English andIndonesia language on some texts relating to Donald Trump is elected as the 45thPresident of USA in 2016 semantically, and (2) to describe the analysis of relativeconstructive clauses between English and Indonesia language semantically. Theresearch method is descriptive qualitative. Meanwhile, method of collecting data isagih method and the techniques are substitution, expand, interuption, and mutation.Based on the texts relating to Donald Trump is elected as the President of USA in2016, it is found that the analysis of relative constructive clause of English andIndonesia language is based on the use of conjunction. In Indonesia language texts,there is one conjuction, namely: “yang”, meanwhile in English language texts, thereare five conjuctions, namely: “who, whom, which, whose, and that”. If it is viewedfrom its semantics adjacent, relative clause can be divided into two sections based onits orthographics, namely: (1) restrictive relative clause which refers to the explainedantecedent or as the integral unity from antecedent and unmarked by comma, and(2) non-restrictive relative clause as the additional information from antecedentexplained and marked by comma.

Natural Language Processing is the multidisciplinary area of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Computational Linguistic for processing human language automatically. It involves understanding and processing of human language. The way through which we share our contents or feelings have always great importance in understanding and processing of language. Parsing is the most suited approach in identifying and scanning what the available sentences expressed? Parsing is the process in which syntactic structure of sentence is identified using grammatical tags. The syntactically correct sentence structure is achieved by assigning grammatical labels to its constituents using lexicon and syntactic rules. Phrase and Dependency are two main structure formalisms for parsing natural language sentences. The growing use of web 2.0 has produced novel research challenges as people from different geographical areas are using this channel and sharing contents in their native languages. Urdu is one of such free word order native language which is widely shared over social media sites but identification and summarization of Urdu sentences is challenging task. In this review paper we present an overview to recent work in parsing of fixed order (i.e. English) and free word order languages (i.e Urdu) in order to reveal the most suited method for Urdu Language Parsing. This survey explored that dependency parsing is more appropriate for Urdu and other free word order languages and parsers of English language are not useful in parsing Urdu sentence due to its morphological, syntactical and grammatical differences.