Grammaticalisation of discourse marking elements in relative clauses

It is commonly accepted that the main sources of relative clause marking elements are demonstratives and interrogatives (Heine and Kuteva 2002). Some studies also mention other items as potential sources, including among others general nominalisers, possessive markers, general complementisers and indefinite elements (Lehmann 1984:367-381). There is, however, a source of relative clause markers that has received little or no attention in the literature, and this is what I will refer to here as discourse marking elements. Under the term ‘discourse marking elements’ I include items that are sometimes referred to as ‘topic markers’, ‘topicalisation markers’ and/or ‘focus markers’, as well as other elements that fall under the more general label ‘discourse markers’ or ‘discourse connectives’.