In linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

, a relativizer is a grammatical element used to indicate a relative clause

Relative clause

A relative clause is a subordinate clause that modifies a noun phrase, most commonly a noun. For example, the phrase "the man who wasn't there" contains the noun man, which is modified by the relative clause who wasn't there...

. Not all languages use relativizers; most Indo-European languages

Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...

 use relative pronoun

Relative pronoun

A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause within a larger sentence. It is called a relative pronoun because it relates the relative clause to the noun that it modifies. In English, the relative pronouns are: who, whom, whose, whosever, whosesoever, which, and, in some...

s 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

Semitic languages

The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...

.

For a survey of how various languages indicate relative clauses, see Relative clause

Relative clause

A relative clause is a subordinate clause that modifies a noun phrase, most commonly a noun. For example, the phrase "the man who wasn't there" contains the noun man, which is modified by the relative clause who wasn't there...

.

Modern Israeli Hebrew

"The Israeli complementizer

Complementizer

In linguistics , a complementizer is a syntactic category roughly equivalent to the term subordinating conjunction in traditional grammar. For example, the word that is generally called a complementizer in English sentences like Mary believes that it is raining...

 she- [ʃe] ‘that’ can be traced back to the Hebrew

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

 complementizer

Complementizer

In linguistics , a complementizer is a syntactic category roughly equivalent to the term subordinating conjunction in traditional grammar. For example, the word that is generally called a complementizer in English sentences like Mary believes that it is raining...

 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

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

 relativizer ‘asher ‘that’, which is related to Akkadian

Akkadian language

Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...

 ‘ashru ‘place’ (cf. Semitic *‘athar) [...] Alternatively, Hebrew

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

 ‘asher derived from she-, or it was a convergence of Proto-Semitic dhu (cf. Aramaic dī) and ‘asher. The Hebrew

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

 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

Complementizer

In linguistics , a complementizer is a syntactic category roughly equivalent to the term subordinating conjunction in traditional grammar. For example, the word that is generally called a complementizer in English sentences like Mary believes that it is raining...

and relativizer, ashér can only function as a relativizer."