Control and intermediate scrambling: An investigation of Kazakh relative clauses

• Published in: Glossa (London) Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 1 - 59
• Main Author: Ótott-Kovács, Eszter
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Open Library of Humanities 31.07.2024; Ubiquity Press
• Subjects: Case marking; Finno-Ugric languages; Grammatical case; Kazakh language; Linguistics; Mongolic languages; Noun phrases; Phrases; Relative clauses; Research Article; Tungusic languages; Turkic languages; Ugric languages; Word order; locality; possessive relatives; extraction; islands; Relative clauses
• ISSN: 2397-1835; 2397-1835
• DOI: 10.16995/glossa.11082

This paper investigates apparent locality violations in Kazakh (Turkic) relative clauses. The empirical starting point of this study is the configuration where the genitive-marked relative clause subject establishes agreement with the noun phrase modified by the relative clause, constituting an ostensibly non-local Agree relation, a phenomenon that is common among Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic and Finno-Ugric languages. Contra previous proposals arguing that the subject is situated inside a defective relative clause and it gets case from the D head of the modified noun phrase, this paper proposes a novel analysis of this phenomenon: the genitive phrase is base-generated in the possessor position and it controls a PRO subject in the relative clause. After establishing that the genitive “subjects” are relative clause-external, the paper turns to extraction out of the relative clause: RC constituents can undergo intermediate scrambling to the left of the genitive-marked phrase. This is unexpected under the assumption that relative clauses are strong islands for extraction. The paper suggests that this type of RC allows extraction because it is not an adjunct.