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The puzzling degraded status of who free relative clauses in English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 November 2015

GARY PATTERSON  and
IVANO CAPONIGRO
GARY PATTERSON
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego, Department of Linguistics, 9500 Gilman Drive, # 0108, La Jolla, CA [email protected]; [email protected]
IVANO CAPONIGRO
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego, Department of Linguistics, 9500 Gilman Drive, # 0108, La Jolla, CA [email protected]; [email protected]
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Abstract

There is a puzzling asymmetry in English with respect to free relative clauses introduced by what and who, with the former (e.g. [What Glenn said] didn't make much sense) intuitively being much more acceptable than the latter (e.g. [Who Glenn married] didn't make much money). In this squib, we explore this degraded acceptability of who free relative clauses, and from the results of an experimental study we identify syntactic features of the sentence that influence the level of acceptability. We discuss the difficulty in finding an independently motivated solution to the puzzling asymmetry within current theories of syntax, semantic and processing. Finally, we touch on a broader theoretical question relating to the robust cross-linguistic process by which elements of the set of wh-words in a language are able to extend their function from introducing interrogative clauses to introducing other clausal constructions.

Type
Squib
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , July 2016 , pp. 341 - 352
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

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