General Structure of Relative Clauses

The debate on the analysis of relative clauses centers on the attachment site of the relative clause and the base position of the head noun. According to the traditional analysis (e.g., Chomsky, 1977; Quine, 1960; Stockwell et al., 1973 and many others), the head noun is generated in a position external to the relative clause which in turn is adjoined to N, N’ or NP depending on the particular assumptions one makes with regard to the phrase structure of nominal phrases.

(4) a. NP b. NP

Det N/N’ NP CP

N/N’ CP

Under the nowadays widely accepted assumption that nominal phrases are in fact DPs headed by a determiner, (Abney, 1987; Szabolcsi, 1983; for German see Olsen, 1991)¹ adjunction to DP become available as an additional option. Fur-thermore, adjunction to NP changes its status since it targets no longer the maxi-mal phrase. The NP-adjunction analysis seems to be particularly popular among semanticists (for discussion see Heim and Kratzer, 1998) since it allows treating the relative clause like any other modifier and associating it with the head noun via predicate modification. Note that adjunction at some level below the maxi-mal phrase runs into problems when the relative clause modifies a complex NP involving two heads, e.g., conjoined NPs as in Tom and Jerry who chase each other.²

(5) a. DP b. DP

D NP DP CP

NP CP D NP

Another issue discussed in the semantic literature concerns the difference between restrictive and appositive relative clauses. The former are argued to be in the scope of the determiner which suggests a structure as in (5a). The determiner has scope over the relative clause when the latter is attached to N or N’ in the traditional analysis (cf. (5b) or to NP in combination with the DP-hypothesis (cf. (5a)).

An alternative way to establish a close relation between determiner and relative

1For arguments against the DP-hypothesis see Payne, 1993; Bruening, 2009.

2This construction is known as the hydra-construction (Link, 1984).

clause is to analyze the latter as the complement of D. This assumption is part of the Head Raising Analysis which will be outlined in turn. Before doing so, I will examine the internal structure of the relative clause.

The relative clause itself is usually assumed to be a CP (or S’ in earlier ter-minology),³ at least when it is headed by a relative pronoun. Inside the relative clause the relative pronoun or an empty operator occupies the left edge (SpecCP) and is linked to the external head via coindexation. Thus, the internal structure of a relative clause corresponds to the structure of embedded wh-questions. Just like a wh-phrase the relative pronoun originates in an argument or adjunct position and moves to the left leaving a gap⁴in its base position. This movement is an instance of A’-movement and is subject to the corresponding restrictions. The resulting structure is shown in (6).

(6) The drug_i[CPOp_i/which_ithe athlete took t_i]

As noted at the outset of the present section, a crucial question in the discussion of relative clauses concerns the base position of the relative clause head noun.

The Head External Analysis as sketched above assumes that the head noun orig-inates outside the relative clause whereas the Head Raising Analysis assumes a relative-clause internal base position of the head noun. A third analysis, the Matching Analysis, combines the two analyses by assuming two heads one of which is deleted under identity (for a recent review of these three main analyses see Salzmann, 2006). Although the three competing analyses coexist already for a long time, the Head External Analysis was the standard analysis for decades. The picture changed in the mid-nineties when the other two analyses experienced a re-vival. Nowadays the Head Raising Analysis which will be outlined in turn seems to be predominant in the literature although to a high degree for theory internal reasons.

The Head Raising Analysis⁵ assumes that the head noun originates relative clause internally and undergoes raising to the edge of the relative clause. Imple-mentations of this idea vary with respect to the phrasal category of the head noun (NP or DP), its final position (relative clause internal or relative clause external) and the nature of the head-clause relation (complementation or adjunction). The Head Promotion Analysis was originally proposed in the seventies (Schachter,

3Alternative proposals analyze relative clauses as a projection of the verb (Sag, 1997), as TPs (e.g., Åfarli, 1994, for Norwegian) or IPs (e.g., Doherty, 2000, for that-less relative clauses in English).

4This gap is usually assumed to be a specific linguistic object—a trace—which is subject to certain conditions, in particular the Empty Category Principle (Chomsky, 1981). Within the min-imalist framework, the Copy Theory of Movement (Chomsky, 1993, 1995) states that movement generates complete copies of which only one is spelled out.

5Alternative terms are Head Internal Analysis and Head Promotion Analysis.

1973; Vergnaud, 1974) and became increasingly popular in the last decade (e.g., Aoun and Li, 2003; Bhatt, 2002; Bianchi, 1999, 2000a; Kayne, 1994; Szczegel-niak, 2004; De Vries, 2006, among many others). The renaissance of the Head Raising Analysis is particularly associated with Kayne (1994). Kayne’s analysis of relative clauses is part of his restrictive theory of phrase structure. This theory assumes that the linear order of constituents unambiguously follows from their hierarchical organization. More specifically, c-command maps onto linear prece-dence as captured in the Linear Corresponprece-dence Axiom. As a consequence, phrase structures universally exhibit the following properties: (i) The universal order is specifier-head-complement. (ii) Diverging orders are derived by leftward move-ment.⁶ (ii) There are no intermediate projections between heads and phrases. (iii) Specifiers are left-adjoined to XP. (iv) Each phrase has only one specifier; mul-tiple adjunctions are excluded. These assumptions, in turn, have consequences for the analysis of relative clauses in that they rule out both adjunction to N’—

intermediate projections are excluded in general—and adjunction to NP—right-adjunction is also abandoned for principled reasons. Instead Kayne proposes that relative clauses are complements of D. The relative-clause head noun originates in the relative clause and moves to the left of the relative clause by means of left-adjunction. The resulting structure is shown in (7).

(7) DP

HHH

D CP

QQ

NP/DP CP

In the original proposal, Kayne distinguishes that-relative clauses in which SpecCP is occupied by an NP and wh-relative clauses in which SpecCP is occupied by a DP headed by the relative pronoun. The two structural options can be unified under the assumption that relative clauses introduced by that contain a DP with an empty head which takes the NP as its complement (Bianchi, 1999, 2000a).⁷ Such an analysis would be in line with the widely accepted assumption that argu-ments are DPs rather than just NPs (e.g., Longobardi, 1994). On the other hand, it raises questions regarding the licensing of the empty D-head as pointed out by Borsley (1997) who takes these problems as counter evidence for Kayne’s entire framework.

(8) a. [_DPthe[_CP[_NPdrug]_ithat the athlete took t_i]]

b. [DPthe[CP[DP[NPdrug]j[DPwhich t_j]]ithe athlete took t_i]]

6This assumption makes the traditional head parameter superfluous and even inappropriate.

7Note that ‘headless relative clauses’ would be misguiding term since it is also used for free relative clauses lacking a head noun: Whoever said this is a liar.

Note that the derivation in (8b) involves an additional movement operation which brings the head NP to the left of the relative pronoun. While there is a broad consensus about movement to SpecCP this subsequent step is highly controver-sial whether it targets the specifier position of the relative operator (Kayne, 1994;

De Vries, 2002) or to the specifier position of some higher functional head (Bianchi, 1999, 2000a; Bhatt, 2002). In any case, the analysis faces the problem that the movement has no obvious trigger (for discussion including a critical review of corresponding proposals, see Salzmann, 2006) and violates locality constraints.

According to the Condition on Extraction Domains (Huang, 1982), a phrase that has undergone movement becomes an island for further extraction. Thus, extract-ing the NP out of the moved DP should be illicit.

Another problem for the Head Raising analysis concerns case. Since the ma-trix verb and the relative-clause verb assign case independently from each other the head noun may incur a case conflict. The Head Raising Analysis wrongly predicts that the case of the head NP is dependent on the relative-clause verb or some other governor inside the relative clause. In fact, however, case is depen-dent on some governor in the matrix clause. There are technical solutions to this problem, but they appear post hoc (e.g., Bianchi, 2000a)⁸or require at least some construction-specific assumptions regarding case checking (e.g., De Vries, 2002).

Taken together, Kayne’s analysis initiated an intensive debate since it faces a variety of both empirical and theoretical problems (cf. Alexiadou et al., 2000 and the contributions to this collection; Borsley, 1997; Bianchi, 1999, 2000a; Dun-can, 2004; Salzmann, 2006). Nevertheless the Head Raising Analysis has certain advantages: it offers an elegant way to account for the link between the relative pronoun and the head noun and a straightforward account for reconstruction ef-fects.

Consider now briefly the Matching Analysis which brings together the con-stituency of the Head External Analysis and the relative-clause internal represen-tation of the head advocated for by the Head Raising Analysis. The Matching Analysis assumes two heads—one inside the relative clause and another in the matrix clause—which are matched. The internal head originates as the comple-ment of the relative operator and moves along with it to SpecCP. The external head originates in an argument position in the matrix clause. The two heads are not members of a movement chain but rather connected via ellipsis which allows for PF-deletion of one of them, namely the internal head.

A final issue to consider is the relation between the head noun and the relative pronoun. The two show agreement in gender and number but not in case. The latter indicates that they are arguments of separate clauses, the former asks for an explanation. There are in principle two ways to account for the match in feature

8Bianchi suggests that morphological case on N is determined after syntax.

specifications: agreement and coindexation (for discussion, see Sternefeld, 2006).

The appropriateness of one or the other relation depends on several factors, first of all but not exclusively on the syntactic analysis of relative clauses.

Note that coindexation is in fact ambiguous since it comprises two different relations which are argued to be modulated by separate principles: coindexation proper (i.e. variable binding) and coreference (cf. Bach and Partee, 1980; Rein-hart, 1983; Grodzinsky and ReinRein-hart, 1993).⁹ Here it can only mean coindexation proper—interpretation of the relative pronoun as a bound variable. Coreference is excluded because the relative pronoun lacks a referent of its own, at least in re-strictive relative clauses. Coindexation in terms of variable binding is not without problems since it requires c-command, which is not obtained in most analyses.

This problem can be solved by assuming that coindexation holds of determiner and relative pronoun rather than of head noun and relative pronoun. Under this assumption (and in combination with the DP-hypothesis), coindexation is possi-ble when the relative clause is either attached to NP as in (5) or the complement of D as in (7).

Agreement, on the other hand, is also not unproblematic. It requires that at some point in the course of the derivation the corresponding features enter a struc-tural relation in which they can be checked against each other. This condition is most easily met in analyses which assume a relative-clause internal representa-tion of the head noun. Hence both the Head Raising Analysis and the Matching Analysis are at advantage in this regard, though there might be technical solutions to this problem in the Head External Analysis as well, e.g. covert raising if the relative pronoun in order to check agreement.¹⁰