CHAPTER 3: RELATIVE CLAUSE CONSTRUCTIONS:
3.3. RCCs in Sign Languages
3.3.1. RCCs in American Sign Language
Liddell’s (1978) prominent studies on relative clauses in ASL described a particular nonmanual marker performing as a restrictive relative clause in response to Thompson’s (1977, as cited in Liddell 1978) statement of ASL not having
‘syntactic subordination.’ The basic description of the nonmanual marker was a back head tilt, raised eyebrows and tensed upper lip. After signing the relative clause, these nonmanual markings change immediately (62). The nonmanual markings are indicated as ‘r’ in the following example sentence (62). This sentence has two possible readings because it lacks the relative pronoun ‘that’ (p.
80). It is also difficult to derive from its context because the dog can either chase the cat or vice versa.
(62) r
RECENTLY DOG CHASE+ CAT COME HOME (1) The dog that recently chased the cat came home.
(2) The cat that the dog recently chased came home.21
(Liddell 1978, p. 66)
21 There are two possible interpretations, which leads to ambiguity in the English translation.
According to Liddell, the head is internal, not external; therefore, the head noun – DOG or CAT – is not easily identified. One of the ways to determine the head is the context and semantic plausibility.
Liddell distinguishes between conjunction (see 63a) and subordination (63b, in that case, a restrictive relative clause). When sentence (62) is compared to sentence (63b) which includes a conjunction BUT, one can see that the nonmanual markings cannot be exploited in conjunctions. The conjunction BUT and the nonmanual subordination feature ‘r’ are mutually exclusive.
(63)
a. [RECENTLY DOG CHASE CAT] BUT [ NOT-YET COME HOME]
The dog recently chased the cat but hasn’t come home.
b. r
*[RECENTLY DOG CHASE CAT] BUT [NOT-YET COME HOME]
The dog which recently chased the cat but hasn’t come home.
(Liddell 1978, p. 72)
In addition, Liddell described optional relative conjunctions, namely the sign THATa, which can be used for testing whether a sentence includes a relative clause. This manual marking may be located between head noun (subject) and verb, as shown in (64). According to Liddell, if the subject DOG were outside of the scope, in other words if it were to be an external head, the sentence would be understood as the first interpretation.
(64) r
RECENTLY DOG THATa CHASE+ CAT COME HOME
(1) The dog that recently chased the cat came home.
(2) The cat that the dog recently chased came home.
(Liddell 1978, p. 75)
There are two more THATs, whose functions are different from THATa, which are indicated as THATb and THATc, respectively. To make the sign THATb, the forearm remains nearly vertical with the wrist cocked back slightly (ibid., p.
77). THATb can be a part of a relative clause but its function is to give the addressee a chance to signal the signer that he knows which person or thing the relative clause is describing (ibid.). On the contrary, THATc has the meaning
‘That’s the one.’ (ibid), which is different from THATa, in that THATc has a initial backward movement. THATc is usually located at the end of the sentence or occurs alone (65). Liddell claims THATc is outside of the scope of the relative clause and that it is obligatory when the relative clause is located at the end of the utterance. Again, the ambiguity still continues since two referents DOG and CAT are within the scope of the nonmanual.
(65) i22 r
‘ME’ FEED [[DOG BITE CAT THATb]S THATc]NP
(1) I fed the dog that bit the cat.
(2) I fed the cat that the dog bit.
(Liddell 1978, p. 76)
As shown in (62) and (64), there are two possible interpretations, which leads to ambiguity in the English translation. According to Liddell, the head is internal, not external; therefore, the head noun – whether DOG or CAT – is not easily defined. One of the ways to determine the head is the context and semantic plausibility. In addition, sentence (62) includes a temporal adverbial (i.e., RECENTLY), which is located before the head noun (either CAT or DOG) (see also Pfau & Steinbach 2005b). Such relative clauses are called Internally Headed Relative Clauses, IHRC, which occur only in OV languages (Cole 1987), as typology suggests.
Liddell (1978) provides examples for the EHRC type in ASL, in which the head is outside of the scope of the relative clause’s nonmanual marker, as shown
22 The sign THATb is emphasized (intensified) during the relative nonmanual marker which is notated as ‘r’. Liddell (1978) adds ‘i’ notation so as to indicate the intensification on the word THATb. (p.76)
in (66). Therefore, ASL may utilize two different types: internally headed and externally headed relative clauses.
(66) r
ASK[X:’him’] GIVE[X:’me’] [DOG [URSULA KICK]S THATc]NP
I asked him/her to give me the dog that Ursula kicked.
(Liddell 1978, p. 85)
Following Liddell’s (1978) publication, Coulter (1983) pointed out that there was almost no distinction between nonmanual signals used in topicalization and relativization. Furthermore, Fontana (1990) offered the criticism that it would be wrong to describe ASL relative clauses as IHRC.
Coulter (1983) shows that Liddell’s evidence does not indicate that restrictive relative clauses are subordinates. Coulter assumes ASL is a young creole and has ‘young’ syntactic constructions. Even terms considered as restrictive relative clauses are more constrained than in English (p. 317), as indicated by the ungrammaticality of all three examples in (67):
(67)
a. i r nod *LONG-AGO HAVE KING, HAVE BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER, THAT.
Once upon a time there was a king who had a beautiful daughter.
b. r
* PEOPLE LIVE GLASS HOUSE, BETTER NOT THROW+distr.+ indefinite.
People who live in glass houses better not throw things around.
c. r
* PERSON COOK MEAT, SHAKE PEPPER TOO-MUCH.
The person who cooked the meat put too much pepper on it.
(Coulter 1983, p. 310)
The head in restrictive RCs in ASL cannot provide new information (HAVE BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER), as in (67a). The head noun with generic readings (PEOPLE) cannot be relativized either in (67b). Furthermore, if the addressee does not know the entity (PERSON), this entity cannot be included in the relative clause (67c).
Coulter shows that the topic and restrictive relative clauses share the same NP (GREEN-THAT) (68a). In addition, there are such examples in which there is no shared NP (ROOMMATE - I) (68b):
(68)
a. r
GREEN, THAT PRO+1 WANT.
(You know) the green one(?), that one I want.
b. r
REMEMBER ROOMMATE BUY CAR, NOW NOT+MUST BICYCLE COMMUTE.
Remember (my) roommate bought a car(?), now (I) don't have to commute by bicycle.
(Coulter 1983, pp. 312-313)
According to Coulter, the NP not being shared, the head nouns in the position of topic, as well as the similarities between nonmanual markings between topics and relativization, may indicate that such syntactic constructions are indeed either conjunction or adjunction, i.e., paratactic rather than hypotactic constructions.
Fontana (1990) discusses further the resemblance of the nonmanual markings in restrictive relatives and the topic-comment structure in ASL. Topic and comment structures usually use referents which are known by both speaker and addressee, in line with Chafe (1976). Furthermore, topic-comment structures generally use ‘locating verbs’ like LOOK-AT, KNOW, and REMEMBER (Fontana 1990, p. 245). Wilbur (1994b) suggests that pseudoclefts23 are preferred instead of generic heads in relative clauses and that the head includes locatives or temporals like WHERE, WHEN, as shown in (69a) and (69b), respectively.
(69)
a. br 24
DON(fs)25 CUT WHERE, GARAGE
Where Don cut something/got cut was in the garage.
b. br
MARY(fs) EXERCISE WHEN, TUESDAY, THURSDAY NIGHTS It’s ON TUESDAY AND THURSDAY NIGHT when/that Mary exercises.
(Wilbur 1994, p. 654)
Wilbur & Patschke (1999) clarify the issue of whether or not brow-raise in ASL is only connected to old information. They provide some examples where markings with brow-raise are not necessarily used for old-information, i.e., in conditionals and contrastive topicalizations. As a result, Coulter’s claim that brow-raise is a topic marker in ASL is not fully acknowledged. Similarly, Dachkovsky
& Sandler (2009) reject Coulter’s generalization in Israeli Sign Language (ISL);
topics and relative clauses are not accompanied by a brow-raise. According to them, percentages of facial action units for relative clauses in their ISL data are as
23 Wilbur (1994b) uses the term “pseudoclefts” for sentences that include two parts with the first part resembling an interrogative sentence and the second part including the answer to this first interrogative part. According to Wilbur, pseudoclefts have the function of backgroundıng (the question part) and foregrounding (the answer part).
24 Here, ‘br’ stands for brow raise.
follows: upper lip raise (50%), squint (85%) and head forward (67%). However, the nonmanual expressions for topics and relative clauses have features in common even in ISL. (Relative clauses in ISL will be discussed in Section 3.3.4).
Yet, the issue of distinguishing ‘topics’ and ‘relative clauses’ still remains in question.
Galloway (2011) provides a different aspect of relative clauses. ASL uses two relativization strategies: correlative and nominalization. The determiners
‘point’ and THAT generally occur in relative clauses. In a rare case, SELF is used as determiner (see also 70c). ASL correlatives may have a resumptive pronoun in the matrix clause, like ‘pta’ (pointing) in (70a), as well. In the correlative strategy, the nonmanual marking is brow-raise but not tensed upper lip. In such strategies, the use of two determiners is regarded as ungrammatical, as in (70b). On the contrary, relative clauses using the nominalization strategy have two different possibilities: subject relatives are accompanied by raised brows and tensed upper lip; object relatives are preferably accompanied by a nose-wrinkle.
(70)
a. Correlative:
[pta GIRL BUY DOG]S pta STUDY FRENCH The girl who bought the dog studies French b. Correlative but not nominalization:
* [THAT GIRL ptgirl TEACHER PUNISH] pt LOVE PRINCIPAL The girl that the teacher punished loves the principal.
c. Subject relative & nominalization:
[GIRL BORROW BOOK] SELF1]GONE The girl who borrowed the book is missing.
d. Object relative & nominalization:
[BOOK ptbook DOCTOR BORROW pt]MISSING The book the doctor borrowed is missing.
(Galloway 2011)
Galloway does not explain why the sentences in (70) are distinguished as being correlatives and nominalizations. However, she points out that heads with non-agreeing verbs are utilized with a determiner. The agreement verbs in relatives may give us a clue about the use of determiners, relativizers or relative pronouns.