Relative Clauses in Private Letters Written in Australia from 1788 to 1900:

A Sociolinguistic Approach

Resumen

This paper explores the distribution of marked and unmarked relativisation strategies in letters written in Australia from 1788 to 1900. The variables that have been considered to determine the selection of such strategies include: nationality, gender, status, period, syntactic function and animacy of the antecedent. According to the results, wh-relatives were more prevalent, although the possibility to use unmarked particles increases throughout the century. Furthermore, status and period are proven to be two variables that influence the choice of some markers and, by contrast, gender and nationality were determined not to have played a role. Finally, syntactic position and animacy of the antecedent also affect the relative marker utilised in a specific slot.