A typological classification of relative clauses in Classical Latin
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/emerita.2011.03.1020Keywords:
relative clauses, typology, accessibility hierarchies, relativization strategies, relative clause positionAbstract
Latin relative clauses have rarely been analyzed from a typological point of view. This paper applies the most relevant typological parameters —i.e. (a) accessibility hierarchies, (b) relativization strategies, (c) position of relative clauses in relation to the lexical head and the matrix clause, (d) relative clauses nominalization degree— to the analysis of relative clauses in de bello Gallico. Data show that the most relativized syntactic position is the subject, even though all positions can be relativized by the relative pronoun. Relative pronoun and non-reduction are the only relativization strategies available in Classical Latin. On the other hand, all possible positions of relative clauses in relation to the lexical head and the matrix clause are documented in the corpus, which have the nominalization degree identified by typologists. Differently from what is expected according to a general view of typology, in Classical Latin the non-reduction strategy is not restricted to preposed and circumnominal relative clauses, but it also occurs in postnominal and postposed ones, showing a different behavior according to the restrictiveness or non-restrictiveness of the relative clause.
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