Subject contact relatives in Asia Minor Greek

Metin Bağrıaçık

Boğaziçi University

In both Pontic (PG) and Pharasiot Greek (PhG) dialects, relative clauses (RC) are, in the unmarked case, introduced by relativizers whose morphological shape vary across dialects and across RC types. (1)–(2) exemplify subject RCs with tu in PhG and p’ in PG respectively:

(1) PhG

[tu a’ niksi to varti] eni tu vasilo i kori […]

rlz prt blossom.3sg the rose is the.gen king.gen the daughter

‘the rose that will blossom is the king’s daughter…’ (Levidis 1892: 388)

(2) PG

[i proskinitadhes p’ idhan ap’ oloera] evarkizan […]

the pilgrims rlz saw.3pl from around yelled.3pl

‘The pilgrims who saw (it) around yelled…’ (Papadopoulos 1938: 467)

Texts on both dialects further exhibit a plethora of apparent RCs in which, however, contrary to the unmarked case, no relativizer is present. For earlier observations, see Andriotis (1948: 51), Anastasiadis (1976: 248) (for PhG), and Papadopoulos (1955: 23), Kiriakides (1951:161) (for PG). This abstract focuses only on relativizerless subject RCs, as in (3)–(4):

(3) PhG

idha [an koritsi katheti ači monaxo ts]

I saw a girl sit.3sg there on her own

‘I saw a girl who/that was sitting there on her own.’ (Andriotis 1948: 51)

(4) PG

ama o perperts eton inas athropos ksai mistikon k’ ekranen

but the barber was a man never secret not kept.3sg

‘But the barber was a man (who) never kept secrets’ (Parcharidis 1885: 153)

Given that both dialects are null-subject varieties, the aim of this note is to assess whether or not relativizerlessstructures as (3)–(4) do indeed qualify as (some sort of) RCs. To this effect, I compare them to ‘subject contact relatives’ (SCRs) of certain English varieties discussed in Jespersen (1928: 143ff), Doherty (1994; 2000), Henry (1995), Haegeman (2015):

(5) I know a smart Greek fella (who) owns maybe twenty restaurants (Doherty 200: 58)

Drawing on synchronic data, I first reveal that relativizer omission in subject RCs is rather restricted: it is most naturally tolerated when the subject RC is a complement of a few verbs, such as see, in copular existential sentences, and in have-existential sentences. Preliminarily judgments suggest that relativizer omission in these contexts is tolerated as long as the head is indefinite. Second, I show that relativizer omission is disallowed when the RC functions as the subject or the indirect object in a given sentence. Finally, I show with a number of tests that a relativizerless RC (in the above configurations) is not a root clause juxtaposed to a nominal (Head): (i) a relativizerless RC and its associated nominal can be topicalized together, (ii) a relativizerless RC can be coordinated with a regular RC, yielding RC-stacking, (iii) a variable pronominal within the RC receives a distributive reading if the Head is quantificational. (i)–(iii) reveal that a relativizerless subject RC is a genuinely embedded clause, behaving on par with fully-fledged RCs; hence, SCRs should be recognized in PhG and PG, verifying the previous observations. The talk also touches upon the issue as to how this configuration might have emerged in PhG.

Selected References

Αναστασιάδης, Β. 1976. Η σύνταξη στο Φαρασιώτικο ιδίωμα της Καππαδοκίας. Διδακτορική διατριβή, Πανεπιστήμιο Ιωαννίνων.

Doherty, C. 2000. Clauses without “that”. The case for bare sentential complementation in English. New York & London: Garland.

Haegeman, L. 2015. A note on English subject contact relatives. In Á. J. Gallego & D. Ott (eds.), 50 years later: Reflections on Chomsky’s aspects, 133–146. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Παρχαρίδης, Ἰ. 1885. Ὁ βασιλέας μὲ τὸ κέρατον. Αστὴρ τοῦ Πόντου 1: 153–154.