The Syntax of relative clauses

403 Pages·2000·2.059 MB·English

by  Artemis Alexiadou, et al

THE SYNTAX OF RELATIVE CLAUSES

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Ken Safir (Rutgers University, New Brunswick NJ)
Höskuldur Thráinsson (University of Iceland, Reykjavik)
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Sten Vikner (University of Stuttgart)
C. Jan-Wouter Zwart (University of Groningen)
Volume 32
Artemis Alexiadou, Paul Law, André Meinunger and Chris Wilder (eds.)
The Syntax of Relative Clauses
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THE SYNTAX OF
RELATIVE CLAUSES
ARTEMIS ALEXIADOU
PAUL LAW
ANDRÉ MEINUNGER
CHRIS WILDER
Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The syntax of relative clauses / Artemis Alexiadou ... [et al.].
p. cm. -- (Linguistik aktuell / Linguistics today, ISSN 0166-0829; v. 32)
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
1. Grammar, Comparative and general--Relative clauses. I. Alexiadou, Artemis.
II. Linguistik aktuell ; Bd. 32.
P297.S96 200 0
415--dc21 99-462049
ISBN 90 272 2753 5 (eur) / 1 55619 916 3 (us) (Hb; alk. paper)
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Table of Contents
Introduction 1
ArtemisAlexiadou,PaulLaw,AndréMeinungerandChrisWilder
Some Issues in the Syntax of Relative Determiners 53
ValentinaBianchi
Type-Resolution in Relative Constructions: Featural marking and
dependency encoding 83
AlexanderGrosu
Some Syntactic and Morphological Properties of Relative Clauses in
Turkish 121
JaklinKornfilt
On Relative Clauses and the DP/PP Adjunction Asymmetry 161
PaulLaw
Relative Asymmetries and Hindi Correlatives 201
AnoopMahajan
An Antisymmetry Analysis of Japanese Relative Clauses 231
KeikoS.Murasugi
A Complement-of-N0 Account of Restrictive and Non-Restrictive
Relatives: The case of Swedish 265
ChristerPlatzack

Some Consequences of the Complement Analysis for Relative
Clauses, Demonstratives and the Wrong Adjectives 309
CristinaSchmitt
A Head Raising Analysis of Relative Clauses in Dutch 349
Jan-WouterZwart
vi TABLEOFCONTENTS
Name Index 387
Subject Index 389
Introduction*
Artemis Alexiadou, Paul Law,
André Meinunger and Chris Wilder
ZASBerlin
Thisvolumepresentsacross-sectionofrecentgenerativeresearchintothesyntax
of relative clause constructions. Interest in this topic has been revitalized by
Kayne’s recent proposal to handle relative clauses in terms of determiner
complementationandraisingoftherelativizednominal(Kayne1994:ch.8).Most
of the papers collected here react in some way to Kayne’s ideas. With this in
mind, Part Iof this introduction centres on adiscussion of these proposals,their
backgroundandmotivations,argumentsforandagainst.1InPartII,weintroduce
each of the papers, positioning them in the wider theoretical context.
PartI.Thetheoreticalcontext
1. Relativeclauses:twoapproaches
Advances in syntactic research of the past decades, leading to the minimalist
program, are due largely to the investigation of complex structures arising
* This volume has its origins in a conference on Relative Clauses, organized by the editors and
hostedbytheZentru mfürAllgemeineSprachwissenschaft(ZAS)inBerlininNovember1996.The
papersbyBianchi,Mahajan,Murasugi,Platzack,SchmittandZwartderivefrompresentationsatthat
conference.Wetakethisopportunitytothankallthespeakersandeveryoneelsewhoparticipatedin
makingthateventasuccess.Theconferenceitselfwasmadepossiblebythegenerousassistanceof
theDeutscheForschungsgemeinschaft(ZAS,Berlin),andoftheMax-Planck-Gesellschaft(Arbeits-
gruppeStrukturelleGrammatik,Berlin).WeareindebtedtoManfredBierwischandEwaldLangfor
encouragement and support. Special thanks to Marcel den Dikken, Hans-Martin Gärtner, Eric
Haeberli, and Gereon Müller for assistance with the manuscripts; and to Christine Maaßen for
indispensable help in preparing the text for publication. Finally, we thank Werner Abraham for
agreeingtoincludethevolumeintheLinguistikAktuellseries.
2 ALEXIADOU,LAW,MEINUNGER,WILDER
through ‘canonical complementation’, whereby a clause (or other extended
projection) functions as the complement of a higher lexical predicate. The most
studied simple and complex structures are, respectively, the simple clause (CP),
with its internal processes of phrasal (A-/A′-) and head movement; and verb-
clausal complement structures, with associated interclausal processes such as
Raising, Exceptional Case Marking and Restructuring. Less progress has been
made in understanding complex structures which do not arise through canonical
complementation, as Chomsky (1995:382,fn.22) notes: “… we still have no
good phrase structure theory for such simple matters as attributive adjectives,
relative clauses, and adjuncts of many different types”.
An important subclass of complex constructions involves finite subordinate
clauses that show properties (1)–(2):
(1) ‘Noncanonical complementation’:
the clause is not an argument of a lexical predicate.
(2) ‘Noncanonicalwh-movement’:theclausecontainsawh-dependency
which
a. is not associated with interrogative semantics.
b. serves to link a position inside the clause and an item outside
that clause.
The best studied case of (1)–(2) cross-linguistically is the relative clause (RC)
construction, in which the clause is embedded inside a nominal expression (DP)
which it modifies:
(3) a. [the book [which John has read]]
b. [das Buch, [das Hans gelesen hat]] [German]
the book-. -. Hans read has
‘the book which Hans read’
Thefrontedrelativepronoun(which/das)intheRCheadsaninternalwh-depen-
dency of a noncanonical type (not associated with interrogative semantics). The
pronoun enters an external dependency with the containing noun phrase (the
book…/dasBuch…), reflected by morphosyntactic agreement between the head

noun (book/Buch) and the pronoun (which vs. *who/das vs. *den [.],
*die[.],etc.).Thisdependencyisinstrumentalindeterminingtheconstruc-
tion’s interpretation — in (3), restrictive modification by the RC.2
Properties (1) and (2) define two basic issues in the syntax of relative
clauses: (a) the structural relation of the clause to the DP containing it —
whethertheclauseisacomplementoranadjunct,andwhereitislocated;(b)the
natureoftherelationbetweenthewh-dependencyandtheheadnoun—whether
INTRODUCTION 3
the noun is generated outside the clause, or originates from inside the clause.
(1)–(2)arecommonto(virtually)allproposals.However,therearetwocompet-
ingapproachestorelativeclausesyntaxwhichdivergeaccordingtotheirviewon
the syntactic expression of each relation.
The semantic distinction between a complement and a relative clause,
respectively‘argument’and‘modifier’oftheheadnoun,isgenerallyassumedto
be encoded in the syntactic configuration. The argument relation is encoded as
sisterhood — in (4a), the clause is sister to the lexical head N0 (‘canonical’
complementation):
(4) [ the [ claim [ that John left]]]
DP NP CP
Theviewon(1)thatwasstandardinworkofthe1980’sandearly1990’sisthat
the modification relation is encoded structurally via adjunction of the clause to
a higher projection of the modified head. In (5), the RC is a sister of a higher
projection of NP/DP to which it is adjoined:
(5) [ the [ [ claim] [ OP (that) John made t]]]
DP NP NP j CP j j
On (2), the standard view is that the N-head is base-generated outside CP, and
is linked tothe wh-dependency inCP by aninterpretive (predication, binding or
‘construal’)relation(Chomsky1977;Safir1986;Browning1991).Thewh-move-
ment dependency may be headed by a wh-pronoun (3a), a [−wh] pronoun (as in
German (3b)), or a null operator (5). The standard view is summarized in (6):
(6) a. Adjunctionhypothesis
Relative clauses are adjoined to NP
b. Base-generatedheadhypothesis
The head noun of a relative clause is base-generated outside
that clause.
Alternatives to both hypotheses have existed for a long time. On (1), an early
proposal was that relative clauses are sisters (complements) to determiners
(Smith 1969). In the framework of the time, the determiner was a daughter of
NPandleftsisteroftheheadnoun.Thesurface‘headN-RC’orderwasanalysed

as the product of a movement rule extraposing the clause in NP — schematically:
(7) a. [ [ the + S] N] → b. [ [ the] N S]
NP Det NP Det
On(2),accordingtothe‘head-raising’(‘promotion’)hypothesis(Vergnaud1974),the
external N-head originates inside CP, and so is directly linked with a CP-internal
position by syntactic movement. These alternatives are summarized in (8):
4 ALEXIADOU,LAW,MEINUNGER,WILDER
(8) a. DeterminerComplementhypothesis
The relative clause is syntactic complement of the determiner
head of DP.
b. Head-raisinghypothesis
The noun phrase raises from inside the relative clause
The alternatives in (6) and (8) are independent of one another. Smith’s version
of (8a) is proposed in conjunction with (6b); (8b) is logically compatible with
(6a). Moreover, the raising hypothesis is compatible with a landing site for the
noun phrase outside of the relative clause, as in Vergnaud’s version of (8b).
Developments in X′-theory and the introduction of the DP-hypothesis have
altered background assumptions about constituent structure within which
proposals are framed. In the context of current models, Kayne (1994) proposes
that both alternatives (8) to the standard approach (6) are correct. Given the
binary branching hypothesis, this has the unorthodox consequence that the head
nounphrase in(3) cannotbe the complement of D,even in derivedstructure. In
Kayne’svariantofthe‘headraising’hypothesis(8b),theheadnounraisestothe
specifier of the complement of D (i.e. SpecCP):
(9) a. [ the [ that John made [ claim]]]]
DP CP DP
b. [ the [ [ claim] that John made t]]]
DP CP DPj j
Exampleswithrelativepronouns(analysedastransitivedeterminers)haveamore
complex derivation, involving an initial step in which the NP complement of D
raises to SpecDP:
(10) a. [ the [ that John made [ which [ claim]]]]]
DP CP DP NP
b. [ the [ that John made [ [ claim] which t]]]]
DP CP DP NPj j
c. [ the [ [ [ claim] which t] C0 John made t ]]]
DP CP DP NPj j k k
From the standpoint of the state of research of the early 1990’s, each of the
approaches (6) and (8) has its specific problems, which, moreover, appear to a
large extent to be complementary, the weakness of one approach being the
strength of the other.

1.1 Adjunctiontoexternalhead
1.1.1 Constituency
The adjunction hypothesis rests on the assumption that the semantic distinction
betweena complementand a relative clauseis encodedin the syntacticconfigu-
ration — sisterhood to head (complement) vs. adjunction to a higher projection
(modifier relation):