good morning.

semitic languages (in general) have a formulation quite different from
indo-european.
for example, arabic.  even though classical arabic has three "cases"
(nominative, accusative, genitive/oblique), the relative "pronoun" is not
inflected.  it's more of a particle that introduces a relative clause
wherein true pronouns serve the purpose that the relative pronoun serve in,
e.g. the indo-european (at least english, german, latin, etc.) construction.

hādha huwa al-baytu alladhī 'askun fīhu
this      he the-house-NOM which 1sg-live in-it
lit. "this is the house which i live *in it*"

the same "which" is used to introduce a relative clause wherein the relative
thing is subject:

hādha huwa al-rajulu alladhī yaskun fil-bayti
this     he  the-man-NOM which 3s-live in-the-house-GEN
lit. "this is the man who (he) lives in the house"

because the pronouns corresponding to direct/indirect objects are necessary
in relative clauses, some ambiguity is inevitable:

hādha huwa ibnu al-rijali alladhī yuHibb-uh
this  he  son-NOM-of the-man-GEN which 3sg-love-him
lit. "he is the man's son, who *he* loves *him*."

alladhī does inflect for gender and number (allatī, etc.) but not case.

matt

On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 8:54 AM, 1 2 <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Good morning,
>
> I would like to ask some questions about non-subject relativization
> (construction of relative clauses referring to noun phrases which are not
> the
> subject of the verb inside the relative clause; they are, for instance, its
> object, instrument, place, etc.).
>
> Just to clarify what I'm trying to say, a subject relativization would be,
> for
> example:
> English: "This is the man who sells hamburgers."
> Here, "who", referring to "man", is the subject of the verb "sells".
>
> Now, examples of NON-subject relativization in languages which use relative
> pronouns:
> English: "This is the knife 'with which' I cut the bread."
> Portuguese: "Essa é a faca 'com a qual' eu cortei o pão."
> Here, "with which"/"com a qual", referring to "knife"/"faca", is the
> instrument of
> the verb "cut"/"cortei", and not its subject.
> The examples above use the relative pronoun "which"/"a qual" with the
> preposition "with"/"com".
> In languages with declension, this pronoun would assume a declined form.
> For example, Sanskrit (in ITRANS transliteration scheme, without sandhi):
> yena astram shatrUn hanmi etad asti.
> "This is the weapon (etad asti astram) with which (yena) I kill the enemies
> (shatrUn hanmi)".
> Here "yena" is the Instrumental case of the relative pronoun, rendering the
> meaning of the preposition "with".
>
> My questions are:
> - What are other possible strategies for non-subject relativization?
> - The examples I gave above are for nominative-accusative languages. How
> would an ergative-absolutive language, for example, render this situation?
>
> Thank you in advance.
>