An overview of relative clauses in Gavar

Abstract

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.