The interface between ‘field linguistics and theory’ : an example from relative clause contructions

The aim the present paper is to propose a new typology of relative clause constructions along the line of to what extent particular languages use the syntax-based (SB) strategy and the pragmatics-based (PB) strategy. It is pointed out that the notion of relevance plays an important role in relating the head and the relative clause. In §.4.2, what factors are relevant to the PB strategy is suggested. In §.5.1, it is emphasized that the new typology put forward here implies the gradation of the syntax-dominant (SD) languages and the pragmatics-dominant (PD) ones. Appendix includes the data to be collected and some of the PB examles from Japanese, Korean and Ainu.

relative clause

head

relevance

syntax-based

pragmatics-based