The paper investigates relative clauses in two Cushitic languages (Somali and Afar, showing the different morpho-syntactic properties that characterize and distinguish restrictive from appositive clauses. The authors therefore propose a specific syntactic derivation for each type of relative clause, accounting for their properties also in a cross-linguistic perspective. In particular, while restrictive relative clauses are analysed according to a raising analysis, in which the relative head is generated within the relative clause, appositive clauses are proved to be predicative modifier of the (referential) nominal head, in a small clause construction