Editing Relative clause (section)

==Formation methods==
Languages differ in many ways in how relative clauses are expressed:
#How the role of the shared noun phrase is indicated in the embedded clause.
#How the two clauses are joined together.
#Where the embedded clause is placed relative to the head noun (in the process indicating which noun phrase in the main clause is modified).

For example, the English sentence "The person that I saw yesterday went home" can be described as follows:
#The role of the shared noun in the embedded clause is indicated by ''gapping''; that is, a gap is left in the object position after "saw", implying that the shared noun phrase ("the person") is to be understood to fill that gap and to serve as the object of the verb "saw".
#The clauses are joined by the ''complementizer'' "that".
#The embedded clause is placed ''after'' the head noun "the person".

The following sentences indicate various possibilities (only some of which are grammatical in English):
*"The person [that I saw yesterday] went home". (A ''complementizer'' linking the two clauses with a ''gapping'' strategy indicating the role of the shared noun in the embedded clause. One possibility in English. Very common cross-linguistically.)
*"The person [I saw yesterday] went home". (Gapping strategy, with no word joining the clauses&mdash;also known as a [[reduced relative clause]]. One possibility in English. Used in [[Arabic]] when the head noun is [[definiteness|indefinite]], as in "a person" instead of "the person".)
*"The person [whom I saw yesterday] went home". (A [[relative pronoun]] indicating the role of the shared noun in the embedded clause—in this case, the direct object. Used in formal English, as in [[Latin]], [[German language|German]] or [[Russian language|Russian]].)
*"The person [seen by me yesterday] went home". (A [[reduced relative clause]], in this case [[passive voice|passivized]]. One possibility in English.)
*"The person [that I saw him yesterday] went home". (A complementizer linking the two sentences with a [[resumptive pronoun]] indicating the role of the shared noun in the embedded clause, as in [[Arabic]], [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]] or [[Persian language|Persian]].)
*"The person [that him I saw yesterday] went home". (Similar to the previous, but with the resumptive pronoun fronted. This occurs in [[Modern Greek language|modern Greek]] and as one possibility in [[Modern Hebrew language|modern Hebrew]]; the combination ''that him'' of complementizer and resumptive pronoun behaves similarly to a unitary relative pronoun.)
*"The [I saw yesterday]'s person went home". (Preceding relative clause with gapping and use of a possessive particle—as normally used in a [[genitive construction]]—to link the relative clause to the head noun, as in [[Chinese language|Chinese]].)
*"The [yesterday I seeing]'s person went home". (Preceding relative clause with gapping, and [[Nominalization|Nominalized]] the final verb, then use of a possessive particle—as normally used in a [[genitive construction]]—to link the relative clause to the head noun. This occurs in many Sino-Tibetan languages and possibly developed from "relative clause + noun" > "nominalized clause + noun" > "genitive construction".,<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.ling.sinica.edu.tw/files/publication/j2008_4_03_2641.pdf |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20211014210721/http://www.ling.sinica.edu.tw/files/publication/j2008_4_03_2641.pdf |archive-date=14 October 2021 |title=Relativization in Qiang |first=Chenglong |last=Huang |journal=Language and Linguistics |volume=9 |issue=4 |date=2008 |pages=735–768}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |url=http://www.ling.sinica.edu.tw/files/publication/j2008_4_05_5653.pdf |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20131029204124/http://www.ling.sinica.edu.tw/files/publication/j2008_4_05_5653.pdf |archive-date=29 October 2013 |title=Relative Clause Structures in the Rawang Language |first=Randy J. |last=LaPolla |journal=Language and Linguistics |volume=9 |issue=4 |date=2008 |pages=797–812}}</ref> as in [[Standard Tibetan|Tibetan]].)
*"The [I saw yesterday] person went home". (Preceding relative clause with gapping and no linking word, as in [[Japanese language|Japanese]] or [[Mongolian language|Mongolian]].)
*"The person [of my seeing yesterday] went home". ([[Nominalization|Nominalized]] relative clause, as in [[Turkish language|Turkish]].)
*"[Which person I saw yesterday], that person went home". (A ''correlative'' structure, as in [[Hindi]].)
*"[I saw the person yesterday] went home." (An ''unreduced, internally headed'' relative clause, as in [[Navajo language|Navajo]].)

===Strategies for indicating the role of the shared noun in the relative clause===
There are four main strategies for indicating the role of the shared noun phrase in the embedded clause.{{citation needed|date=May 2020}} These are typically listed in order of the degree to which the noun in the relative clause has been reduced, from most to least:

# Gap strategy or gapped relative clause
# Relative pronoun
# Pronoun retention
# Nonreduction

====Gapped relative clause====
In this strategy, there is simply a gap in the relative clause where the shared noun would go. This is normal in English, for example, and also in Chinese and Japanese. This is the most common type of relative clause, especially in [[subject–object–verb|verb-final]] languages with prenominal relative clauses, but is also widespread among languages with postnominal externally headed relative clauses.

There may or may not be any marker used to join the relative and main clauses. (Languages with a case-marked relative pronoun are technically not considered to employ the gapping strategy even though they do in fact have a gap, since the case of the relative pronoun indicates the role of the shared noun.) Often the form of the verb is different from that in main clauses and is to some degree nominalized, as in Turkish and in English [[reduced relative clause]]s.<ref>{{cite book | last=Carrol | first=David W. | edition=5th | title=Psychology of Language | publisher=Thomson & Wadsworth | location=Belmont | year=2008 |isbn=9780495099697 |oclc=144326346}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | last1=Townsend | first1=David J. |first2=Thomas G. |last2=Bever  | title=Sentence Comprehension: The Integration of Habits and Rules | year=2001 | publisher=MIT Press | location=Cambridge | pages=247&ndash;9 |oclc=45487549}}</ref>

In non-verb-final languages, apart from languages like [[Thai language|Thai]] and [[Vietnamese language|Vietnamese]] with very strong politeness distinctions in their grammars{{Citation needed|date=December 2011}}, gapped relative clauses tend, however, to be restricted to positions high up in the accessibility hierarchy. With obliques and genitives, non-verb-final languages that do not have politeness restrictions on pronoun use tend to use pronoun retention. English is unusual in that ''all'' roles in the embedded clause can be indicated by gapping: e.g. "I saw the person who is my friend", but also (in progressively less accessible positions cross-linguistically, according to the ''[[accessibility hierarchy]]'' described below) "...&nbsp;who I know", "...&nbsp;who I gave a book to", "...&nbsp;who I spoke with", "...&nbsp;who I run slower than". Usually, languages with gapping disallow it beyond a certain level in the accessibility hierarchy, and switch to a different strategy at this point. [[Classical Arabic]], for example, only allows gapping in the subject and sometimes the direct object; beyond that, a resumptive pronoun must be used. Some languages have no allowed strategies at all past a certain point—e.g. in many [[Austronesian languages]], such as [[Tagalog language|Tagalog]], all relative clauses must have the shared noun serving the subject role in the embedded clause. In these languages, relative clauses with shared nouns serving "disallowed" roles can be expressed by [[passive voice|passivizing]] the embedded sentence, thereby moving the noun in the embedded sentence into the subject position. This, for example, would transform "The person who I gave a book to" into "The person who was given a book by me". Generally, languages such as this "conspire" to implement general relativization by allowing passivization from ''all'' positions — hence a sentence equivalent to "The person who is run slower than by me" is grammatical. Gapping is often used in conjunction with case-marked relative pronouns (since the relative pronoun indicates the case role in the embedded clause), but this is not necessary (e.g. Chinese and Japanese both using gapping in conjunction with an indeclinable complementizer).

====Relative pronoun type====
This is a type of gapped relative clause, but is distinguished by the fact that the role of the shared noun in the embedded clause is indicated indirectly by the case marking of the marker (the [[relative pronoun]]) used to join the main and embedded clauses. All languages which use relative pronouns have them in clause-initial position: though one could conceivably imagine a clause-final relative pronoun analogous to an adverbial subordinator in that position, they are unknown.

Some languages have what are described as "relative pronouns" (in that they agree with some properties of the head noun, such as number and gender) but which do not actually indicate the case role of the shared noun in the embedded clause. [[Classical Arabic]] has "relative pronouns" which are case-marked, but which agree in case with the ''head'' noun. Case-marked relative pronouns in the strict sense are almost entirely confined to [[Standard Average European|European languages]]{{Citation needed|date=August 2011}}, where they are widespread except among the [[Celtic languages|Celtic family]] and [[Indo-Aryan languages|Indo-Aryan family]]. The influence of Spanish has led to their adaption by a very small number of [[indigenous languages of the Americas|Native American languages]], of which the best known are the [[Keresan languages]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://wals.info/languoid/lect/wals_code_aco|title=WALS Online - Language Acoma|website=wals.info|access-date=8 April 2018}}</ref>

====Pronoun retention type====
In this type, the position relativized is indicated by means of a [[personal pronoun]] in the same syntactic position as would ordinarily be occupied by a noun phrase of that type in the main clause—known as a ''[[resumptive pronoun]]''. It is equivalent to saying "The woman who I saw <u>her</u> yesterday went home". Pronoun retention is very frequently used for relativization of inaccessible positions on the accessibility hierarchy. In [[Persian language|Persian]] and [[Classical Arabic]], for example, resumptive pronouns are required when the embedded role is other than the subject or direct object, and optional in the case of the direct object. Resumptive pronouns are common in non-verb-final [[languages of Africa]] and Asia, and also used by the Celtic languages of northwest Europe and [[Romanian language|Romanian]] ("Omul pe care <u>l</u>-am văzut ieri a mers acasă"/"The man who I saw <u>him</u> yesterday went home"). They also occur in deeply embedded positions in English, as in "That's the girl that I don't know what <u>she</u> did",<ref name="mckee">{{citation|title=Resumptive Pronouns in English Relative Clauses|first1=Cecile|last1=McKee|first2=Dana|last2=McDaniel|journal=Language Acquisition|volume=9|number=2|year=2001|pages=113–156|doi=10.1207/s15327817la0902_01|s2cid=143402998}}.</ref> although this is sometimes considered non-standard.

Only a very small number of languages, of which the best known is [[Yoruba language|Yoruba]], have pronoun retention as their sole grammatical type of relative clause.

====Nonreduction type====
In the nonreduction type, unlike the other three, the shared noun occurs as a ''full-fledged noun phrase'' in the embedded clause, which has the form of a full independent clause. Typically, it is the head noun in the main clause that is reduced or missing. Some languages use relative clauses of this type with the normal strategy of embedding the relative clause next to the head noun. These languages are said to have ''internally headed'' relative clauses, which would be similar to the (ungrammatical) English structure "[You see the girl over there] is my friend" or "I took [you see the girl over there] out on a date". This is used, for example, in [[Navajo language|Navajo]], which uses a special relative verb (as with some other Native American languages).

A second strategy is the ''correlative''-clause strategy used by [[Hindi]] and other [[Indo-Aryan languages]], as well as [[Bambara language|Bambara]]. This strategy is equivalent to saying "Which girl you see over there, she is my daughter" or "Which knife I killed my friend with, the police found that knife". It is "correlative" because of the corresponding "which ... that ..." demonstratives or "which ... she/he/it ..." pronouns, which indicate the respective nouns being equated. The shared noun can either be repeated entirely in the main clause or reduced to a pronoun. There is no need to front the shared noun in such a sentence. For example, in the second example above, Hindi would actually say something equivalent to "I killed my friend with which knife, the police found that knife".

Dialects of some European languages, such as Italian, do use the nonreduction type in forms that could be glossed in English as "The person just passed us by, she introduced me to the chancellor here."

In general, however, nonreduction is restricted to verb-final languages, though it is more common among those that are [[head-marking language|head-marking]].

===Strategies for joining the relative clause to the main clause===
The following are some of the common strategies for joining the two clauses:
*Use of an indeclinable particle (specifically, a [[relativizer]]) inserted into the sentence, placed next to the modified noun; the embedded clause is likewise inserted into the appropriate position, typically placed on the other side of the complementizer. This strategy is very common and arguably occurs in English with the word ''that'' ("the woman that I saw"), though this interpretation of "that" as something other than a relative pronoun is controversial (see [[#English|below]]). In the modern [[varieties of Arabic]] (using ''illi'' placed after the modified noun); in [[Chinese language|Chinese]] (using ''de'' placed before the modified noun).
*Use of a [[relative pronoun]]. Prototypically, a relative pronoun agrees with the head noun in gender, number, definiteness, animacy, etc., but adopts the [[grammatical case|case]] that the shared noun assumes in the ''embedded'', not matrix, clause. This is the case in a number of conservative European languages, such as [[Latin]], [[German language|German]] and [[Russian language|Russian]]. Many languages also have similar linking words commonly termed "relative pronouns" that agree in some way with the head noun, but do not adopt the case role of the embedded clause. In English, for example, the use of ''who'' vs. ''which'' agrees with the animacy of the head noun, but there is no case agreement except in the formal English contrast ''who'' vs. ''whom''. Similarly, in [[Classical Arabic]], there is a relative pronoun that agrees in number, gender, [[definiteness]] ''and'' case with the head noun (rather than taking the case role of the noun in the embedded clause). Languages with prototypical relative pronouns typically use the gapping strategy for indicating the role in the embedded clause, since the relative pronoun itself indicates the role by its case. ([[Classical Arabic]], where the case marking indicates something else, uses a [[resumptive pronoun]].) Some linguists prefer to use the term ''relative pronoun'' only for the prototypical cases (but in this case it is unclear what to call the non-prototypical cases).
*Directly inserting the embedded clause in the matrix clause at the appropriate position, with no word used to join them. This is common, for example, in English (cf. "The person I saw yesterday went home"), and is used in [[Classical Arabic]] in relative clauses that modify indefinite nouns.
*By [[nominalization|nominalizing]] the relative clause (e.g. converting it to a participial construction). Generally, no relative pronoun or complementizer is used. This occurs, for example, in [[reduced relative clause]]s in English (e.g. "The person seen by me yesterday went home" or "The person planning to go home soon is my friend"). Formal German makes common use of such participial relative clauses, which can become extremely long. This is also the normal strategy in [[Turkish language|Turkish]], which has sentences equivalent to "I ate the potato of Hasan's giving to Sina" (in place of "I ate the potato that Hasan gave to Sina"). This can be viewed as a situation in which the "complementizer" is attached to the verb of the embedded clause (e.g. in English, "-ing" or "-ed" can be viewed as a type of complementizer).

===Position of the head noun with respect to the relative clause===
The positioning of a relative clause before or after a head noun is related to the more general concept of [[Branching (linguistics)|branching]] in linguistics. Languages that place relative clauses after their head noun (so-called ''head-initial'' or ''VO'' languages) generally also have adjectives and [[genitive construction|genitive modifier]]s following the head noun, as well as verbs preceding their objects. [[French language|French]], [[Spanish language|Spanish]] and [[Arabic]] are prototypical languages of this sort. Languages that place relative clauses before their head noun (so-called ''head-final'' or ''OV'' languages) generally also have adjectives and [[genitive construction|genitive modifier]]s preceding the head noun, as well as verbs following their objects. [[Turkish language|Turkish]] and [[Japanese language|Japanese]] are prototypical languages of this sort. Not all languages fit so easily into these categories. English, for example, is generally head-first, but has adjectives preceding their head nouns, and [[genitive construction]]s with both preceding and following modifiers ("the friend of my father" vs. "my father's friend"). [[Chinese language|Chinese]] has the ''VO'' order, with verb preceding object, but otherwise is generally head-final.

Various possibilities for ordering are:
*Relative clause following the head noun, as in English, [[French language|French]] or [[Arabic]].
*Relative clause preceding the head noun, as in [[Turkish language|Turkish]], [[Japanese language|Japanese]], or [[Chinese language|Chinese]].
*Head noun ''within'' the relative clause (an ''internally headed'' relative clause). An example of such a language is [[Navajo language|Navajo]]. These languages are said to have [[#Nonreduction type|nonreduced]] relative clauses. These languages have a structure equivalent to "[I saw the person yesterday] went home".
*Adjoined relative clause. These languages have the relative clause completely outside the main clause, and use a correlative structure to link the two. These languages also have [[#Nonreduction type|nonreduced]] relative clauses. [[Hindi]], the most well-known such language, has a structure similar to "Which person I saw yesterday, that person went home" or (without fronting of the relativized noun in the relative clause) "I saw which person yesterday, that person went home". Another example is [[Warlpiri language|Warlpiri]], which constructs relative clauses of a form similar to "I saw the man yesterday, which he was going home". However, it is sometimes said these languages have no relative clauses at all, since the sentences of this form can equally well translate as "I saw the man who was going home yesterday" or "I saw the man yesterday when/while he was going home".