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Ivano Caponigro and Maria Polinsky
81-89 (complete pdf)
This paper analyzes the way the Northwest Caucasian language Adyghe uses the very same construction -- a complex DP containing a relative clause -- to convey those meanings that in English and other familiar languages are conveyed by five different embedded clausal constructions: headed or free relative clauses, embedded declarative clauses, embedded polar interrogatives, and embedded constituent interrogatives. The paper focuses on the morphosyntax of this Adyghe construction, providing new data and arguments for the uniform use of a complex DP in lieu of clausal embedding (for a detailed compositional semantics see Caponigro and Polinsky, 'Almost everything is relative in the Caucasus,' SALT XVIII, 2008). These results suggest that parametric variation in clausal embeddings may be richer than it is traditionally assumed.
Published in:
Proceedings of the 27th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics
edited by Natasha Abner and Jason Bishop
Table of contents
ISBN 978-1-57473-428-7 library binding
vii+466 pages
publication date: 2008
published by Cascadilla Proceedings Project, Somerville, MA, USA