In linguistics, a relativizer is a grammatical element used to indicate a relative clause. Not all languages use relativizers; most Indo-European languages use relative pronouns instead, and some languages, such as Japanese, rely solely on word order to indicate relative clauses. Languages that do use relativizers include most Semitic languages.
For a survey of how various languages indicate relative clauses, see Relative clause.
Relativizer versus complementizer (across languages)
Israeli
"The Israeli complementizer she- [∫e] ‘that’ can be traced back to the Hebrew complementizer she- ‘that’, which derives from the Hebrew relativizer she- ‘that’. There is no consensus about the origin of the latter. It might be a shortened form of the Hebrew relativizer ‘asher ‘that’, which is related to Akkadian ‘ashru ‘place’ (cf. Semitic *‘athar) [...] Alternatively, Hebrew ‘asher derived from she-, or it was a convergence of Proto-Semitic dhu (cf. Aramaic dī) and ‘asher. The Hebrew relativizer ‘ashér is the origin of the Israeli relativizer ashér ‘that’, which is much less common than the Israeli relativizer she- ‘that’. Whereas Israeli she- functions both as complementizer and relativizer, ashér can only function as a relativizer."[1]
References
- ^ A quote from p. 79 of Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2006), "Complement Clause Types in Israeli", Complementation: A Cross-Linguistic Typology, edited by R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 72-92 (Chapter 3).
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