Relative Clauses in West Greenlandic: A descriptive analysis in terms of Functional Grammar

Abstract

In my MA Thesis of 1991, I have tried to give a concise overview of all relevant factors directly involved in one important subdomain of noun modification in West Greenlandic, namely that which can be discerned as restrictive relative clause formation. An important ground for investigation of this area of West Greenlandic (henceforth WG) grammar I feel, is the lack of attention it has got in traditional works of grammar. This lack is quite understandable, as it is with some right that the grammarians concerned have sometimes stated that relative clauses (henceforth RCs) don't really exist in WG, or at least not as we know them from many Indo-European (henceforth I-E) languages. Relativization is brought about in WG by means of devices that correspond to participle forms in I-E languages. At the same time, these devices, the intransitive and the passive participle, serve other grammatical ends as well besides noun modification. Therefore, factors involved in RC formation are treated in different parts of these grammatical works.