A Study Of Relative Clauses In Dali Wase Bai Language

Relative clauses have always been a hot topic of research in linguistics.Many scholars have researched the relative clauses from different perspectives and have achieved certain results.However,there is a gap in the study of relative clauses in ethnic languages.Based on the noun accessibility hypothesis,this study depicts and analyzes the types of relative clauses and the features of different types of relative clauses in the Bai language by using the minimal pair method with the Dali Wase Bai language as the main corpus.The following three research questions are solved:1)How many types of relative clauses are there in Wase Bai language?2)What is the difference between different relative clauses in terms of relativizer,relativization process and function?3)For head words in different syntactic positions,what are the different extraction approaches and relativization means of different relative clauses?It has been found that from the perspective of the presence or absence of the head word,the Bai relative clauses can be classified into headed relative clauses and headless relative clauses,among which,headed relative clauses can be further categorized into prenominal relative clauses（Rel N）and postnominal relative clauses（NRel）.The headless relative clause is a type of Rel N or NRel omitting the head word subject to the constraints of discourse.In this thesis,we compare and analyze the Rel N and NRel and find that they use the same relativization marker n（?）⁵⁵,but there are differences in the relativization process,semantic-function,and head word extraction.The relativization marker is closely related to nominalization.As for the relativization process,they extract head word first,and then add relativizer to different positions.In terms of semantic-function,the Rel N mainly takes on the determining function,and the NRel mainly takes on the descriptive function.When it comes to extracting head words,only subject and oblique nouns can be extracted directly,while other components need to be promoted to the subject position for relativization;whereas all Rel N clauses can directly extract head words of various components.This study not only provides a comprehensive portrayal of the relative clauses in Bai,but also explores their relativization strategies and restrictions.This plays an important role in the enrichment and development of the Bai language.From a typological point of view,Bai belongs to Tibeto-Burman languages,and this study will provide reference for future research on relative clauses in other Tibeto-Burman languages.