Internally Headed Relative Clauses in Akkadian: Identifying Weak Quantification in the Construct Sta

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Internally Headed Relative Clauses in
AkkadianIdentifying Weak Quantification in the
Construct State
(American Oriental Society Annual Meeting,
Philadelphia, March 18, 2005)
Cale Johnson (cale_at_ucla.edu) Cuneiform Digital
Library Initiative, UCLA
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What is an IHRC? (1)
(1) Externally Headed Relative Clause in
English DP The horse CP that the man bought
was a good horse DP HEAD CP RELATIVE (2)
Externally Headed Relative Clause in Quechua
(Cole 1987, 277 apud Basilico 1996, 499) DP
CP nuna ranti-shaq-n bestya alli bestya-m k
a-rqo-n DP CP man buy-Perf-3 horse.Nom good ho
rse.Evid be-Past-3 DP CP RELATIVE HEAD
The horse that the man bought was a good horse
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What is an IHRC? (2)
(2) Externally Headed Relative Clause in Quechua
(Cole 1987, 277 apud Basilico 1996, 499) DP
CP nuna ranti-shaq-n bestya alli bestya-m k
a-rqo-n DP CP man buy-Perf-3 horse.Nom good ho
rse.Evid be-Past-3 DP CP RELATIVE HEAD T
he horse that the man bought was a good
horse (3) Internally Headed Relative Clause in
Quechua (Cole 1987, 277 apud Basilico 1996,
499) CP nuna bestya-ta ranti-shaq-n alli besty
a-m ka-rqo-n CP man horse-Acc buy-Perf-3 good h
orse-Evid be-Past-3 CP RELATIVE . . . HEAD . .
. The horse that the man bought was a good
horse
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Lakhota IHRCs The definiteness effect in IHRCs
(4) Lakhota IHRC with indefinite determiner
marking the head of the IHRC (Williamson 1987,
171) DP CP Mary owiza wa kage ki he ophew
athu DP CP Mary quilt a make the Dem I.buy
I bought the quilt that Mary made (5)
Ungrammatical Lakhota IHRC with definite
determiner in the same position (Williamson 1987,
171) DP CP Mary owiza ki kage ki he op
hewathu DP CP Mary quilt the make the Dem
I.buy I bought the quilt that Mary made
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The definiteness effect in English (cf. Hallman
2004)

• (6) Weakly quantified nominals in English
• There is/are a fireman / three firemen / many
  firemen / firemen available.
• (7) Strongly quantified nominals in English
  (ungrammatical in existential sentence)
• There is/are the fireman / every fireman /
  most firemen / Sheila available
• Weak quantifiers (grammatical in existential
  sentence)
• indefinite article a fireman
• cardinal numbers three firemen
• a few firemen / many firemen
• bare plurals firemen
• Strong quantifiers (ungrammatical in existential
  sentence)
• definite article the fireman
• universal quantifiers every fireman / all
  firemen
• most firemen
• proper nouns Sheila

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EHRC and IHRC in Korean
(8) Externally headed relative clause in Korean
(Kim 2004, 39) John-un ei tomangka-n-un sey-m
yeng-uy totwuki-ul capassta PN-Top ei run.aw
ay-Impf-Rel three-Cl-Gen thief-Acc
caught John caught three thieves (out of
possibly many more) who were running away (9)
Internally headed relative clause in Korean (Kim
2004, 39) John-un sey-myeng-uy totwuk-i tomang
ka-n-un kes-ul capasstaa PN-Top three-Cl-Gen
thief-Nom run.away-Impf-Rel kes-Acc
caught (Only) three thieves were running away
and John caught all of them
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Lakhota IHRCs The definiteness effect in IHRCs
(4) Lakhota IHRC with indefinite determiner
marking the head of the IHRC (Williamson 1987,
171) DP CP Mary owiza wa kage ki he ophew
athu DP CP Mary quilt a make the Dem I.buy
I bought the quilt that Mary made (5)
Ungrammatical Lakhota IHRC with definite
determiner in the same position (Williamson 1987,
171) DP CP Mary owiza ki kage ki he op
hewathu DP CP Mary quilt the make the Dem
I.buy I bought the quilt that Mary made
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Construct state and the definiteness effect
(10) The construct state in Biblical
Hebrew bet ham-melek house.Const Def-king (1
1) The construct state in Akkadian bt ßarr-im
house.Const king-Gen the house of the king
(12) ßa genitive in Akkadian bt-um ßa ßarr-im h
ouse-Nom Det/Rel king-Gen a/the house of the
king (13) DP-ßu ßa genitive in Akkadian
(Huehnergard 1989, 227) bs-su ßa ßarr-im hous
e-his Det/Rel king-Gen the house of the king
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Hypothesis

• The head of a construct relative clause is
  non-specific and weakly quantified
• Construct relative clauses are internally headed
  relative clauses (whereas those using the
  determinative-relative pronoun are, at least in
  the Old Babylonian period, externally headed)
• The construct state indicates the head of the
  internally headed relative clause just as the
  indefinite article does in Lakhota
• The head of a construct relative should only be
  able to refer to cardinal amounts (cf. the
  absolute state) and should not be able to pick a
  subset out of a larger, contextually salient
  group since it is weakly quantified
• Anaphoric demonstratives (awlum ßu) should not
  be able to refer to the head of a construct
  relative since it is non-specific

Syntactic Tests
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CH 119 (silver that . . .)

• (14) CH 119, rev., iii 74 iv 4
• 74. ßum-ma a-wi-lam If a claim has seized
  a man, and
• 75. e-ºi4-il-tum
• 76. is-ba-su2-ma
• 77. GEME2-su2 ßa DUMU.MEÍ ul-du-ßum He sells a
  female slave of his who has
• 78. a-na KU3.BABBAR it-ta-din given birth to
  children for him,
• (iv)
• 1. KU3.BABBAR DAM.GAR3 iß-qu2-lu The (amount of)
  silver that the
• trading-agent paid,
• 2. be-el GEME2 i-ßa-qal-ma The owner of the
  female slave will
• 3. GEME2-su2 i-pa-tar2 (re)pay and he
  will set his female
• slave free
• (15) kasap tamkar-um ißqul-u
• silver.Const trade.agent-Nom he.weighed-Sub
• The (amount of) silver that the trade-agent
  paid (for the female slave)

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CH 232 (house that . . .)
(16) CH 232, rev., xix 82-92 82-83. ßum-ma
NIG2.GUR11 If he ( a builder) 83. u?2-ta-al-
li-iq destroyed property, 84-85. mi-im-ma
/ ßa u2-?al-li-qu2 Whatever he
destroyed, 86-87. i-ri-ab / u3 aß-ßum E2
i-pu-ßu He will replace, and because he built a
house, 88-89. la u2-dan-ni-nu-ma / im-qu2-tu Did
not strengthen it, and it fell down, 90-91. i-na
NIG2.GUR11 / ra-ma-ni-ßu Out of his own
property, 92. E2 im-qu2-tu i-ip-pe2-eß He
will build a house (equivalent to)
the one that fell. (17) ßumma
awlum . . . , awlum ßu iddâk If a man
. . ., that man will be killed (18) aßßum . . .
(bt) imqutu, bt imqutu ippeß Because
the house . . . fell down, he will build a house
(equivalent to) the house that fell down
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Stacked IHRCs
(19) Stacked IHRCs in CH 232 (20)
Mojave stacked IHRC (Munro 1976, 202 apud
Basilico 1996, 516) tunay pipa º-uyu-ny
hatCoq kyo-ny-C poß kaºak-k yesterd
ay person I-see-Dem dog bite-Dem-Subj cat
kick-Tns The man I saw yesterday
whom the dog bit kicked the cat
imqutu
la udanninu-ma
pußu
bt
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Conclusions

• The construct state (like the absolute state in
  certain respects) codes non- specificity,
  cardinality and weak quantification. In other
  words, the construct state requires identity of
  quantity but not identity of substance
• Since the only kinds of relative clause that
  allow stacking are restrictive EHRCs and IHRCs,
  the construct relative must be one of these two
  types, but the absence of relativizers from the
  stacked Akkadian example indicates that it must
  be an IHRC
• The weak quantificational nature of the
  construct state allows it to act as an
  indication of the head of the IHRC
• If the ßa relative derives historically from
  the construct relative, as suggested by
  Deutscher (2001 2002), this must have taken
  place through focalization since construct
  relatives are IHRCs and, consequently,
  definiteness effect environments, only focus
  allows strongly quantified nouns to occur in a
  definiteness effect environment.

Implications
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Bibliography
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internally headed relative clauses. Language
72498-532. Cole, Peter. 1987. The structure of
internally headed relative clauses. Natural
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fall of a rogue relative construction. Studies
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34. Kim, Min-Joo. 2004. Event Structure and the
Internally Headed Relative Clause Construction
in Korean and Japanese. PhD dissertation
University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Ravn, O.E.
1941. The So-called Relative Clauses in Accadian
or the Accadian Particle ßa. Copenhagen Nyt
Nordisk Forlag. Williamson, Janis. 1987. An
indefiniteness restriction for relative clauses
in Lakhota. In Eric Reuland and Alice ter
Meulen, eds., the Representation of
(In)definiteness, pp. 168-190. MIT Press.