Relative clause constructions in Gyegu Tibetan

Abstract

This paper represents the first analysis of relative clauses in Gyegu Tibetan. Gyegu Tibetan is a Tibetic language spoken in and around Yushu City, Qinghai Province, People's Republic of China. The language forms relative clauses using a nominalized clause to modify a head noun, with five nominalizers used to form such constructions: /k^hi/, /mə/, /s^ha/, /tɕə/, and /zi/. Their use is determined primarily by the thematic role of the relativized noun (with regards to the RC-internal gap). The nominalizer /s^ha/ is used to relativize location arguments. The nominalizers /k^hi/ and /mə/ have overlapping distribution and are both used with agent arguments, while /tɕə/ and /zi/ also show overlapping distribution with patient and theme arguments, although only /zi/ is used with instrument arguments. In addition to morphosyntactic and semantic factors restricting the choice of nominalizer, the size of the relative clause and the choice of nominalizer also interact, with certain nominalizers being unable to co-occur with temporal and/or aspectual morphology. Each nominalizer also receives either an inherent perfective or imperfective aspectual interpretation, which may be neutralized using the aspectual morpheme /də/. Our analysis of Gyegu Tibetan is broadly in line with earlier accounts of relative clause constructions across other Tibetic languages.