[Sem SynSem] Ömer Demirok & Balkiz Öztürk (Boğaziçi University)

In this talk, we investigate the relativization strategies available to Laz, an endangered South Caucasian language spoken primarily in Turkey. Formally, there are two main types of relativization strategies in Laz: one that involves gaps and one that involves wh-pronouns. The former has two sub-varieties, namely head-external prenominal relative clauses and headless relative clauses. The latter strategy, on the other hand, is restricted to correlatives. An intriguing observation that concerns the distribution of these strategies is the complementarity between the two main strategies. Accordingly, our main question is: why is it that gapped relative clauses cannot be used to build correlatives and wh-pronouns cannot be used to build headless relative clauses that occupy an argument position or head external relative clauses? We explore an answer to this question that involves taking correlative clauses to be on a par with indirect questions.

 

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