| Summary: | This paper attempts to describe the complementary nature of Koryak relative clauses (RCs) which is manifested in participial and finite subordinate strategies. Koryak, which belongs to the Chukchi-Kamchatkan language family, employs two main strategies of RC formation, that is, the participial strategy and the finite subordinate clause strategy. They differ from each other with regard to NP positions they can relativize. Thus, the participial strategy can relativize intransitive subject or transitive object of restrictive clauses, whereas the finite subordinate strategy functions to relativize oblique case NPs and possessor nouns. In other words, coexistence of these two strategies is not random, but reflects their complementary distribution in terms of the Accessibility Hierarchy posited in the universal RC typology.
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