Headless Relative Clauses in Select Kuki-Chin Languages

Abstract:

Tibeto-Burman languages indigenously lack the Relative-Correlative Construction. All the Tibeto-Burman languages exhibit the relative clause construction with the Gap Strategy, where the gap could be in the embedded clause or in the matrix clause. The former are called Externally-Headed Relative Clauses (EHRCs) and the latter, Internally-Headed Relative Clauses (IHRCs) (Subbarao, 2012).

In both types, the head of the relative clause is [+definite]. In this paper I shall discuss the formation Headless Relative Clauses in which the head is [-definite]. Language that have the Relative-Correlative Construction form Headless Relative Clauses by the repetition of the relative pronoun as in Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages. However, in languages that do not have a relative pronoun as in the Kuki-Chin languages, a specific element in the predicate is reduplicated. The elements that are reduplicated depend on the grammatical position of the [-definite] Head that is relativized.