Cover not available
Article published In:
Diachronica
Vol. 37:4 (2020) ► pp.474–513

Interrogatives as relativization markers in Indo-European

 | University of California, Santa Barbara | MPI for the Science of Human History
The use of interrogative pronouns as relative clause markers is often mentioned as a typical feature of European languages. This study presents an empirical approach to the distribution of interrogative pronouns as relative clause markers in time and space in the Indo-European language family. Based on a comprehensive sample of ancient and modern Indo-European languages, it is shown that interrogative-marked relative clauses are present in all stages of Indo-European within and outside of Europe. An analysis by branch suggests that this constitutes a case of parallel innovations subsequently spreading via language contact. The study also shows that interrogatives are used as relative clause markers independently of whether they are inflected pronouns or invariable markers.
Keywords: diachronic typology, interrogatives, relative clauses, Indo-European languages, areal features, morphosyntactic change
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data collection and analysis
    • 2.1Sample
    • 2.2Coding
    • 2.3Working definitions and concepts
      • Relativization and its markers
      • Interrogative
      • Complementizer
  • 3.Overview by branch
    • 3.1Tocharian
    • 3.2Indo-Iranian
      • 3.2.1Indic
      • 3.2.2Iranian
    • 3.3Anatolian
    • 3.4Armenian
    • 3.5Greek
    • 3.6Albanian
    • 3.7Balto-Slavic
      • 3.7.1Slavic
      • 3.7.2Baltic
    • 3.8Italic
    • 3.9Germanic
    • 3.10Celtic
  • 4.Moving through time and space
  • 5.(Non-)Correlations with other features
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Supplementary material
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 27 October 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.19030.aud
References (38)
References
Alster, Bendt. 2002. Relative clauses and case relations in Sumerian. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 921: 7–31.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1989. Relative clauses. In Language universals and linguistic typology 138–164. 2nd edn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
. 2006. Syntactic typology: Just how exotic ARE European-type relative clauses. In Ricardo Mairal & Juana Gil (eds.), Linguistic universals, 130–154. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deutscher, Guy. 2002. The Akkadian relative clauses in cross-linguistic perspective. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie 92(1): 86–105. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Diessel, Holger. 2003. The relationship between demonstratives and interrogatives. Studies in Language 27(3): 635–655. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eska, Joseph F. 2009. The emergence of the Celtic languages. In The Celtic languages, 36–41. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fiorentino, Giuliana. 2007. European relative clauses and the uniqueness of the relative pronoun type. Italian Journal of Linguistics 19(2): 263–291.Google Scholar
Fortson IV, Benjamin W. 2010. Indo-European language and culture: An introduction. 2nd edn. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Gamkrelidze, Thomas V. & Vyacheslav V. Ivanov. 1990. The early history of Indo-European languages. Scientific American 262(3): 110–117. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010. Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans: A reconstruction and historical analysis of a proto-language and proto-culture part i: The text. part ii: Bibliography, indexes. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Hackstein, Olav. 2012. The evolution of finite complementation in Tocharian. In Georges-Jean Pinault, Michael Peyrot, Jens Elmegård Rasmussen & Thomas Olander (eds.), Tocharian and Indo-European studies, vol. 131, 117–148. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.Google Scholar
Hammarström, Harald, Robert Forkel & Martin Haspelmath. 2019. Glottolog 4.1. Available online at [URL]
Haspelmath, Martin. 2001a. The European linguistic area: Standard Average European. In Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher & Wolfgang Raible (eds.), Language typology and language universals: An international handbook, 1492–1510. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2001b. Indefinite pronouns. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd & Tania Kuteva. 2006. From question to subordination. In The changing languages of Europe, 204–243. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hoffner, Harold & H. Craig Melchert. 2008. A grammar of the Hittite language. Winona Lake, ID: Eisenbrauns.Google Scholar
Igla, Birgit. 1996. Das Romani von Ajia Varvara: Deskriptive und historisch-vergleichende Darstellung eines Zigeunerdialekts. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Jasanoff, Jay H. 1999. Some relative forms of the verb in Old Irish. In Compositiones Indogermanicae in memoriam Jochem Schindler, 205–222. Prague: Enigma.Google Scholar
Kahle, David & Hadley Wickham. 2013. ggmap: Spatial visualization with ggplot2. The R Journal 5(1): 144–161. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kim, Ronald. 1999. Observations on the absolute and relative chronology of Tocharian loanwords and sound changes. Tocharian and Indo-European Studies 81: 111–138.Google Scholar
Lehmann, Christian. 1984. Der Relativsatz. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Leiwo, Martti. 2002. From contact to mixture: Bilingual inscriptions from Italy. In J. N. Adams, Mark Janse & Swain Simon (eds.), Bilingualism in ancient society, 168–194. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Luján, Eugenio R. 2009. Relative clauses in Proto-Indo-European. In Vit Bubenik, John Hewson & Sarah Rose (eds.), Grammatical change in Indo-European languages, 221–234. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Manzini, M. Rita & Leonardo M. Savoia. 2014. From Latin to Romance: Case loss and preservation in pronominal systems. Probus 26(2): 217–248. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matras, Yaron. 2004. Romani – a linguistic introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Melchert, H. Craig. 2012. Genitive case and possessive adjective in Anatolian. In Vincenzo Orioles (ed.), Per Roberto Gusmani. Studi in ricordo. Linguistica storica e teoretica, vol. 21, 273–286. Udine: Forum.Google Scholar
Meyer, Robin. 2017. Iranian-Armenian language contact in and before the 5th century CE. Oxford Wolfson College, University of Oxford dissertation.Google Scholar
Morgenstierne, Georg, Josef Elfenbein, D. N. MacKenzie & Nicholas Sims-Williams. 2003. A new etymological vocabulary of Pashto. Wiesbaden: Reichert.Google Scholar
Nadkarni, Mangesh V. 1975. Bilingualism and syntactic change in Konkani. Language 51(3): 672–683. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Neukom, Lukas & Manideepa Patnaik. 2003. A grammar of Oriya (ASAS 17). Universität Zürich.Google Scholar
Orel, Vladimir Ė. 2000. A concise historical grammar of the Albanian language: Reconstruction of Proto-Albanian. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Paudyal, Netra. 2009. The syntax of three-argument verbs in Nepali. Qualifying paper.Google Scholar
Penney, John. 2011. Archaic and old Latin. In James Clackson (ed.), A companion to the Latin language, 220–235. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Perder, Emil. 2013. A grammatical description of Dameli. Stockholm University dissertation.Google Scholar
Ringe, Don. 2017. Indo-European dialectology. In Jared Klein, Brian D. Joseph & Matthias Fritz (eds.), Handbook of comparative and historical Indo-European linguistics, vol. 11, 62–75. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Widmer, Manuel, Sandra Auderset, Johanna Nichols, Paul Widmer & Balthasar Bickel. 2017. NP recursion over time: Evidence from Indo-European. Language 93(4): 799–826. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yakubovich, Ilya. 2008. The origin of Luwian possessive adjectives. In Karlene Jones-Bley, Martin E. Huld, Angela Della Volpe & Miriam Robbins (eds.), Proceedings of the 19th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, November 3–4, 2007, vol. 541 JIES Monograph, 193–217.Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Zakaria, Muhammad
2024. Evidence of a contact-induced change. Asian Languages and Linguistics 5:1 ► pp. 132 ff. DOI logo
Brendel, Christian D.
2023. Translation‐Induced Interrogative Relativizers and Stability in Icelandic. Transactions of the Philological Society 121:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
É. Kiss, Katalin
2023. From relative proadverb to declarative complementizer: the evolution of the Hungarianhogyʻthatʼ. The Linguistic Review 40:1 ► pp. 107 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 august 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.