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Integrated non-restrictive relative clauses in Shupamem

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Abstract

This article investigates the structural and interpretative properties of relative clauses in Shupamem, an under-studied Grassfields Bantu language of Cameroon, focusing on the integration status of non-restrictive relative clauses, an under-researched aspect of relative clause syntax. We show that non-restrictive relatives have the same properties as restrictive relatives in the language and argue that considerations relating to illocutionary independence, scope relations with matrix negation and intentional verbs, VP ellipsis, pronominalization, binding, weak crossover effects, parasitic gaps, and split antecedents, among others, support the conclusion that Shupamem non-restrictive relatives are clause-internal nominally-integrated syntactic objects, as in Italian and Mandarin Chinese. This finding supports Cinque’s (2008) discovery that non-restrictive relative clauses come in both integrated and non-integrated varieties, and typologically places Shupamem among the languages of the world that exclusively manifest the integrated non-restrictive relative clause structure.

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Notes

  1. Shupamem (ISA 639-3: bax), also known as “Bamun,” is spoken by about 420,000 people (Eberhard et al. 2019) in the Western Province of central Cameroon. The Shupamem data in this article are presented in IPA. Abbreviations follow the Leipzig Glossing Rules with minor deviations and include: comp = complementizer; cop = copula; evid = evidential; expl = expletive; imperf = imperfective; neg = negative; pl = plural; prs = present; prt = particle; pstn = past, level n (there are 4 past tense time depths in Shupamem; see Nchare 2012); q = question particle; recip = reciprocal; rel = relative clause marker; sg = singular; top = topic. The following diacritics are used to mark surface tone: V́ = high; V̀ = low; V̌ = rising; V̂ = falling.

  2. We determined that restrictive and non-restrictive RCs in Shupamem are prosodically and intonationally identical by informally analyzing F0 contours and checking other prosodic features (e.g. presence of pauses, boundary tones, etc.) using Praat (Boersma and Weenink 2017).

  3. We thank an anonymous reviewer for providing this example as well as the one in (4b).

  4. We thank an anonymous reviewer for supplying this example as well as the one in (6d).

  5. We thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this diagnostic to us.

  6. Proforms may also resume heads plus restrictive RCs, as in English, once again demonstrating an absence of structural asymmetry between restrictive and non-restrictive RCs in the language. Evidence that the proforms in these cases are replacing the full RC and not just the RC head comes from the fact that such substitutions give rise to ambiguities involving strict vs. sloppy identity. Due to space limitations, the relevant examples are not presented here.

  7. An anonymous reviewer suggests that further evidence for the integrated status of non-restrictive RCs in Shupamem might come from the domain of main clause phenomena. If any such phenomena could be recognized in the language, they would be predicted to be unavailable inside both non-restrictive and restrictive RCs in the language, due to their shared integrated/embedded status. Space limitations prevent us from pursuing this diagnostic here, so we leave it for future research to determine. We thank the reviewer for this helpful suggestion.

  8. A number of authors have disputed the claim that non-restrictive RCs cannot be stacked. These include Fukui (1986: 232); Kameshima (1989); Grosu and Landman (1998: 126); Grosu (2000: 112); Kempson (2003); de Vries (2006: 252); Arnold (2007); and Loock (2010).

  9. A reviewer points out that although non-restrictive RCs can stack in Dutch, the language has clearly non-integrated non-restrictive RCs according to considerations of prosody and the criteria outlined in section 3. Thus, stacking is likely not a decisive diagnostic for integration, at least for languages like Dutch.

  10. See Kempson (2003: 302) and Arnold (2007: 288) for purported examples of extraposed non-restrictive RCs in English and de Vries (2006: 254) for a case of non-restrictive RC extraposition in Dutch. It is not entirely clear whether such cases represent genuine instances of extraposition or special cases of non-adjacency like that found across discourse. An anonymous reviewer, however, remarks that extraposition of non-restrictive RCs in Dutch is fully productive and thus, that extraposition is not a decisive diagnostic for RC integration in languages like Dutch.

  11. Apparent cases of extraction out of restrictive RCs are also observed in Romance languages (Cinque 2010) and beyond (see Sichel 2018 and Cinque 2020 for an overview). It is not clear, however, that extractable RCs in Scandinavian and these other languages have a complex NP/DP structure, as opposed to CP/weak island syntax (Grosu 1994; Sichel 2014; Cinque 2020). Thus, the non-island character of restrictive RCs in these languages may in fact be an illusion.

  12. An anonymous reviewer asks if the peripheral/moved DP elements in (34) can be analyzed as base-generated hanging topic left dislocated constituents. They cannot. Space limitations preclude a detailed defense of this claim, but see Schurr et al. (2022), where the argument for A-bar movement is made on the basis of the following facts: the moved element triggers crossover effects within the RC; extraction licenses parasitic gaps within the RC; and Condition A-based reconstruction effects within the RC obtain.

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Acknowledgements

We thank our handling editor Martin Salzmann and our three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and thoughtful questions, all of which substantially improved the quality of this article. For valuable feedback and insightful comments, we are also grateful to the following individuals: Sam Al Khatib, Memo Cinque, Masha Esipova, John Gluckman, Brent Henderson, Richie Kayne, Margaret Matte, Gesoel Mendes, and Hagay Schurr. Finally, we thank the audiences of NYU Syntax Brown Bag and Annual Conference on African Linguistics 51–52, where portions of this material were presented. All errors and oversights are our own.

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  1. Linguistics Program, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, 365 Fifth Ave, Room 7407, New York, NY, 10016, USA

    Jason Kandybowicz

  2. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, St. John’s University, 8000 Utopia Parkway, Jamaica, NY, 11439, USA

    Abdoulaye Laziz Nchare

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The manuscript was written by the first author. Data was collected and analyzed by the first author, but provided by the second author. Both authors read, commented on, and approved the final manuscript.

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Kandybowicz, J., Nchare, A.L. Integrated non-restrictive relative clauses in Shupamem. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 41, 655–677 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-022-09551-4

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