Universidad de Panamรก Facultad de Humanidades English Department Veraguas Branch Master in Applied Linguistics of the English Language
Relativization in English and Spanish
Participant`s name: Betsy Fonseca
I.D 4-717-743
August 9th , 2014
Relativization in English and Spanish The discipline that study language is called linguistics and it has different branches such as theoretical linguistics, descriptive linguistics and so on. However, applied linguistics takes in consideration some studies and fundamentals of those areas. Also, applied linguistics use contrastive analysis that compares and contrast two language systems for developing new ideas in Second Language Acquisition. Contrastive analysis is the part of linguistics that investigates the differences and similarities between languages. According to Gast (2013) the main goal of contrastive analysis is to provide new ideas that need to be applied in second language acquisition and translation studies in order to determine some aspects that both languages share and how those similarities can help language learners. Besides, Stanley (2002) said that languages share the same basic features, components, functions of the system, types of rules, etcetera. Therefore, this tool determines what are the differences and similarities and predict what type problems second language learners should face at the time of acquiring a second language. For the purpose of this document, relativization or relative clause provides information about something or someone that most of the time we specified in a sentence. In both English and Spanish are two types of relative clauses which are restrictive and nonrestrictive. According to Lopez ( 1992 ) found that relative clause should be related with the precedent part of sentence. For that reason they received the name of restrictive and non-restrictive. Restrictive clause describes the antecedent adding explanations or attributions that cannot be omitted because the sense of the sentence can be affected.
On the other hand, Lopez (1992) refers to non- restrictive clauses which include extra details or aspects to the previous words so It means that people can delete the non- restrictive without loss the meaning of sentence. Besides, restrictive and non- restrictive have a position in a sentence but non-restrictive can be separated by commas or at the end of the sentence. Relative clauses use relative pronouns and relative adverbs such as that, which, who, what, whom, whose, where, when, why for including information in a sentence. We consider some examples that illustrate better the previous information: Restrictive Clauses Ø The students who study a lot usually get good grades. Ø Los estudiantes que estudian mucho usualmente obtienen excelentes calificaciones. Ø I have a friend whose have a beautiful car. Ø Tengo un amigo que tiene un bonito auto. Ø The book that I am Reading is from Paulo Coelho. Ø El libro que estoy leyendo es de Paulo Coelho. Ø The boy who I came with is my brother. Ø El chico con quien vine es mi hermano. Non-Restrictive Clauses Ø My mother in law, who is 60`s , drive her car. Ø Mi suegra, que tiene sesenta años, conduce su auto.
Ø Chiriqui, which is the most visited province in Panama, has beautiful beaches. Ø Chiriquí, cuál es la provincia más visitada de Panamá, tiene hermosas playas. Ø My car, which is new, has engine problems. Ø Mi auto, que es Nuevo, tiene problemas de motor. Ø The girl, who is at the Forestal bus stop, is my sister. Ø La muchacha, que está en la parada de Forestal, es mi Hermana. In conclusion, learners whose first languages are very different from English may have important difficulty in recognizing and understanding relative clause. But, we can say that English and Spanish share the same structure in relative clause even though English relative clause use the same relative pronouns for singular or plural (who, that, which). It does not occur in Spanish because we use relative pronouns in singular (cuál, quièn) or plural (cuáles, quiénes) to make a distinction from plural to singular.
Bibliography Fernàndez, E. (2003). Bilingual Sentence Processing: relative clause attachment in English and Spanish. Philadelphia: John Bejamins Publishing Co. Lopez, A. O. (1992). Sintagmas Relativos en Inglès y ESpañol. Oviedo: Servicios de Editoriales. Marìa Luisa Carriò Pastor, M. C. (1 de January de 2013). dialnet. August 6, 2014, de unirioja: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/jbp/lic/2013/00000013/00000001/art00002 . www.dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/artìculo/2925910.pdf Valker Gast. (2013). August 1, 2014, de www.uni-jena.de/-mu65qev/papdf/ca.pdf Whitley, M. S. (2002). Spanish/English Contras. Washimgton: Georgetown University Press.