Detail #417: Some ideas about relativization

I assume everyone knows of the relativization hierarchy by now. 

1. A Second Relativization Hierarchy

Let's instead imagine a species with a language faculty that creates two relativization hierarchies, but also permits for a systematic exception.

The first hierarchy is familiar - the relativization hierarchy. I will not even modify it for this idea.

The second hierarchy is an "external" relativization hierarchy. It, and the first one, have implications between them. I will have the same order for that hierarchy:

Subject > Direct Object > Indirect Object > Oblique > Genitive > Object of comparative

What the second hierarchy tells us is which roles an NP of an external clause can be relativized as.

Thus, if a genitive in the main clause can take a subclause in which it corresponds to the oblique, then so can also the oblique, the indirect object, the direct object and the subject. 

One could also imagine extreme things like "only the subject in the main clause can take relative clauses" or "only the subject in the main clause can correlate with anything but the subject in the subclause".

However, I imagine it could be likely for any NP to also permit an "echo" of its own role in the subclause, which would create a systematic exception. This type of exception I'd like to term a "linear" exception.

2. Subdivisions of the relativization hierarchy

One could imagine, for instance, that inanimate nouns have a stricter hierarchy than animate nouns.

3. Questions about the relativization hierarchy

3.1 Do we know where secundatives are with regards to the relativization hierarchy?

3.2 Is there any research or even any hypotheses around as to whether there's any roles that go to the right of objects of comparisons, or between the known elements?

Detail #416: Disjunctive Reciprocals

It is conceivable that a language distinguishes the following meaning-structures in the morphology of its reciprocals:

A acts on B and B acts on A > A and B act on each other

A acts on B or B acts on A > A or B act on each other_disjunctive. 

One could even imagine, then, that partial negations also could fit into this:

A but not B act on each other_disjunctive. 

This could be done by differential case or by some marker that is entirely separate from case. 

Detail #415: Reciprocals and Collective Nouns

Normally, reciprocals take a plural noun (or several coordinated noun phrases) and make the entities that make up an agent (or comparable role) act upon each other.

A rather interesting situation is the use of collective nouns and reciprocals:

?the team watched each other in astonishment

*laget såg förvånat på var-andra (literally: team-the saw surprisedly on each-other)

Yeah, no, the ? mark there is probably wrong, for a huge majority it probably genuinely is *. I am convinced that some languages permit, without hesitation, constructions analogous to the one above.

Historically, "one another" and the Russian construction "drug druga" (drug = nom, druga = acc) probably consist of two bits - one ("one", "drug") encoding the subject, and the other ("another", "druga") the object. From a purely abstract look at it, it feels like this construction might be marginally more tolerable in English? In Russian, I have it on a fairly reliable source that this is entirely acceptable.

*the team watched one another in astonishment

para obnimala drug druga 

In Swedish, some passive verbs primarily have a reciprocal meaning:

vi kysstes ('we were kissing')

vi slogs ('we were fighting (each other, but can also mean 'we fought random people')

Now, most Swedes accept

paret kysstes ('the couple were kissing')

despite this being a reciprocal with singular subject. 

However, I can't just let it stand at "this is okay in a language so there you go", can I?

We could imagine, for instance, that a language does get any number of congruence or discongruence-phenomena with this.

1) Singular forms of 'each other'.

In Swedish at least, 'varandra' is morphologically plural. One could imagine a system where a singular form appears with a singular subject. In Russian, 'drug druga' is morphologically singular, but one could imagine a partitive genitive instead on the subject noun - getting us something like 'druga druga'.

Here, an unrelated idea appears: in the dual, a language could very well have a reciprocal singular pronoun: 'both saw the other', but 'the thief and the policemen saw each other' .

2) Plural verb forms and adjectives with singular subjects.

Some varieties of English permit plural verb forms with collective singulars, but one could imagine a situation where plural verb forms only are used with singulars in situations where the singular is blocked by the presence of a reciprocal pronoun.

3) Congruentially Forced Plurals

The subject could exhibit other behaviors that are typical of plurals, including morphological or congruence-related behaviors. Maybe the reciprocality forces an explicit plural marking, so that "the groups saw each other" can signify both 'the members of the group saw each other' or 'the different groups' members saw the other groups'. Maybe adjectives need plural congruence. Maybe they are forced to take a plural article.