In linguistics, a relativizer (abbreviated rel or relz) is a type of conjunction that introduces a relative clause. For example, in English, the conjunction that may be considered a relativizer in a sentence such as "I have one that you can use." Relativizers do not appear, at least overtly, in all languages; even in languages that do have overt or pronounced relativizers, they do not necessarily appear all of the time. For these reasons it has been suggested that in some cases, a "zero relativizer" may be involved, meaning that a relativizer is implied in the grammar but is omitted in speech or writing. For example, the word that can be omitted in the above English example, producing "I have one you can use", using (on this analysis) a zero relativizer.
History Perhaps as early as 1712 but at least as early as 1761, numerous terms have been used for certain lexical items that introduce various clauses. One such term is relative pronoun, which was coined in the 18th century and gained widespread usage in the early to mid-19th century. A clause marker is another term that has been used to describe an item that introduces a clause. Beginning in 1938, relativizer emerged as a term that now competes with relative pronoun. Despite that contrasting nomenclature and notwithstanding their disparate lexical categories, relativizers and relative pronouns essentially perform the same function by way of introducing a relative clause.
Promotional analysis The promotional analysis is a transformational analysis from 1973 depicting relative clauses in English, and how relative pronouns are introduced into the embedded clause. This analysis assumes that there is no overt head noun in the deep structure of the main clause. In order to form a relative construction, the noun phrase from the embedded clause is promoted to the empty head of the noun phrase of the main clause. From there, a corresponding relative pronoun leaves a trace in the space of the vacated noun phrase in the embedded clause. For example:
Matching analysis The Matching Analysis is another type of transformational analysis from the 1970s, which was in competition with the Promotional Analysis at that time. In this analysis the relative pronoun is introduced into the embedded clause by corresponding or matching to the head noun in the main clause. This is done by taking the noun phrase from the embedded sentence in the deep structure that matches the head noun in the noun phrase of the main clause, and replacing it with a relative pronoun. The relative pronoun thus co-references the head noun in the main clause. Finally, the relative pronoun is moved to the clause-initial position. For example:
Ouhallian analysis There are two separate phrasal heads that relativizers can occupy. Cross-linguistically, relativizers may occupy either the head of a complementizer phrase (C-Type Relativizer) or the head of a determiner phrase (D-Type Relativizer). C-Type Relativizers can introduce a relative clause as an argument of a noun phrase, or they can introduce a relative clause as an argument of a verb phrase. D-Type Relativizers may only introduce a relative clause as an argument of a noun phrase. English is a language which uses a C-Type Relativizer, that, as a part of its relativization strategy because "that" can introduce a relative clause as either the argument to a Noun Phrase or the argument to a Complementizer Phrase. The following examples from English shows the same morpheme being used in both syntactic contexts.
Conversely, Arabic uses two phonologically distinct morphemes to account for these syntactic phenomena. In the same sentences in a D-Type language like Arabic, each example would employ the use of a different morpheme as shown in examples 1 & 2. In Classical and Standard Arabic, the D-Type relativizer declines according to the gender and number of the noun, but the C-Type does not do so (according to the verb).
In modern English There are three types of relativizers used in English to introduce relative clauses: zero or null relativizers, wh-relativizers, and the that-relativizer.
Comparative distribution of null and overt relativizers Relativizers have been analyzed to be optional in certain languages and are variably omitted in the English language. Such relativizer omission, or use of the null or zero variant of relativizers, does not pattern uniformly in English and has been predicted to be conditioned and constrained by a number of linguistic and social factors. These social factors and the potential influence of age, gender, and education have been minimally explored and seem to exhibit a lesser effect on relativizer omission. Linguistic constraints, such as sentence structure and syntactic position of the relativizer, main clause construction type, lexical specificity of the head NP, type of antecedent, and the adjacency, length, and grammatical subject of the relative clause have been implicated as having more significant influence on the patterning of relativizer omission in Canadian English. The omission of relativizers tends to occur more frequently in conversation than in formal writing.
Distribution with subject and object relative clauses The syntactic position or function of the relativizer in the relative clause is a major determiner for the choice of relative marker. The null relativizer variant is more common in object than subject relative clauses.
3) I have friends that are moving in together. (subject) 4) That's one thing that I actually admire very much in my father. (direct object) 5) Everyone's kinda used to the age group [Ø] they work with. (object of preposition)
Informational content of the main clause determines distribution There is a preference for null relativizers when a main clause that is informationally light is directly adjacent to the relative clause. For example:
6) It's just kinda something [Ø] I noticed recently. 7) They get values and stuff like that from church that they might not get at home.
In this example, the main clause 'it's just kinda something' provides little semantic information and it is adjacent to the relative clause 'I noticed recently'. As such, it is thought that the main clause and the relative clause are processed together as a unitary processing chunk that is functioning like a single statement, which results in a null relativizer.
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