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R E L AT I V E C L A U S E S
Using novel examples from live, unscripted radio/TV broadcasts and the internet, this path-breaking book will force us to reconsider the nature of everyday English and its complex interplay of syntactic, pragmatic, sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic factors. Uncovering unusual types of non-standard relative clauses, Andrew Radford develops theoretically sophisticated analyses in an area that has traditionally hardly been touched on: that of non-standard (yet not clearly dialectal) variation in English. Making sense of a huge amount of data, the book demonstrates that some types of non-standard relative clauses have a complex syntactic structure of their own in which the relation between the relative clause and its antecedent is either syntactically encoded or pragmatic in nature, while others come about as a result of hypercorrection, and yet others arise from processing errors. andrew radford is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the University of Essex. His many books include Minimalist Syntax (2004), Analysing English Sentences (2016) and Colloquial English: Structure and Variation (2018), all published by Cambridge University Press.
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cambridge studies in linguistics General editors: p . a u s t i n , j . b r es na n , b. c om r i e , s . cr a i n, w . dr e s s le r, c. j . e w en , r . l a s s , d . li g h t f o o t, k . ri c e, i . ro b er t s , s. r o m a i ne , n . v. sm i t h
Relative Clauses
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In this series 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134.
135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148. 149. 150.
juan u riagere ka : Syntactic Anchors: On Semantic Structuring d. r obert ladd : Intonational Phonology (second edition) leonard h. bab by: The Syntax of Argument Structure b. elan dres her: The Contrastive Hierarchy in Phonology d avi d a dge r, dan iel ha rbou r and laurel j. watki ns: Mirrors and Microparameters: Phrase Structure beyond Free Word Order ni in a nin g zha ng: Coordination in Syntax nei l s mi th: Acquiring Phonology ni na to pintz i: Onsets: Suprasegmental and Prosodic Behaviour cedric boeckx, norbert hornstei n and ja iro n unes: Control as Movement m ic h a e l is r ael: The Grammar of Polarity: Pragmatics, Sensitivity, and the Logic of Scales m . r it a m an zin i and leonardo m. savoi a: Grammatical Categories: Variation in Romance Languages barbar a cit ko: Symmetry in Syntax: Merge, Move and Labels rachel walker: Vowel Patterns in Language mary dalr ymple and ir ina n ik ola eva : Objects and Information Structure jerrold m. sadock: The Modular Architecture of Grammar dunstan brown and andrew hi ppi sley : Network Morphology: A Defaults-based Theory of Word Structure bet telou los, cor rien bl om , geert booi j, mari on ele nbaas and a ns van k e me nad e: Morphosyntactic Change: A Comparative Study of Particles and Prefixes ste ph en crai n: The Emergence of Meaning hu bert hai de r: Symmetry Breaking in Syntax jose´ a. camacho: Null Subjects gregory stump and raphael a. fin kel: Morphological Typology: From Word to Paradigm bru ce tesar : Output-Driven Phonology: Theory and Learning asier a lca´ z ar and mario s altarelli : The Syntax of Imperatives misha becke r: The Acquisition of Syntactic Structure: Animacy and Thematic Alignment marti na wilt schko : The Universal Structure of Categories: Towards a Formal Typology f ah ad ra shed a l- mut ai ri: The Minimalist Program: The Nature and Plausibility of Chomsky’s Biolinguistics cedric boeckx: Elementary Syntactic Structures: Prospects of a Feature-Free Syntax p ho evo s p an agi ot idi s: Categorial Features: A Generative Theory of Word Class Categories m ark b ake r: Case: Its Principles and its Parameters wm g. ben nett: The Phonology of Consonants: Dissimilation, Harmony and Correspondence a ndre a s im s: Inflectional Defectiveness gregory stump: Inflectional Paradigms: Content and Form at the Syntax-Morphology Interface rochell e li eber : English Nouns: The Ecology of Nominalization
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151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161.
john bowers : Deriving Syntactic Relations ana ter esa p e´ rez-l eroux , mi hae la p irvulescu and yves rob erge: Direct Objects and Language Acquisition matt hew baerman , du nstan b rown and greville g. c orbet t: Morphological Complexity marc el den di kken: Dependency and Directionality lauri e baue r: Compounds and Compounding klau s j . kohler: Communicative Functions and Linguistic Forms in Speech Interaction kurt goblir sch: Gemination, Lenition, and Vowel Lengthening: On the History of Quantity in Germanic a ndr ew ra df ord : Colloquial English: Structure and Variation m ar i a p oli n s k y: Heritage Languages and their Speakers egbert for tuin and ge tty ge erdi nk-verkoren : Universal Semantic Syntax: A Semiotactic Approach a ndr ew ra df ord : Relative Clauses: Structure and Variation in Everyday English Earlier issues not listed are also available
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R E L AT I V E C L A U S E S S T R U C T U R E AN D VAR I ATI O N IN E V E RY D AY E N G L I S H
ANDREW RADFORD University of Essex
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University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108492805 DOI: 10.1017/9781108687744 © Andrew Radford 2019 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2019 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Radford, Andrew, author. Title: Relative clauses : structure and variation in everyday English / Andrew Radford, University of Essex. Description: Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2019. | Series: Cambridge studies in linguistics | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018048986 | ISBN 9781108492805 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: English language – Relative clauses. | BISAC: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / General. Classification: LCC PE1385 .R33 2019 | DDC 425–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018048986 ISBN 978-1-108-49280-5 Hardback ISBN 978-1-1080-72968-0 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
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This book is dedicated to my dear departed parents (Emily and Eric), who survived a doodlebug attack in the war which blew out all the windows in our house, then had to face the more daunting task of bringing me up! My mum loved to recount the story of the day when she left me in a pram outside a shop, and I rocked it so hard that I eventually fell out – ever after I became known as ‘the pram-rocker’. A bystander who took pity on me looked at the deep wound (OK: tiny scratch) on my prominent forehead and said: ‘He’ll be a professor one day, mark my words’. Thanks for everything, mum and dad – you set an example I have always tried to live up to.
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Contents
Acknowledgements
page
xi
Prologue
1 7
1
Background
1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7
Introduction Types of Relative Clause The Structure of Relative Clauses Truncated Relative Clauses Relativisers Derivation of Relatives Summary
7 7 15 24 32 45 52
54
2
Resumptive Relatives
2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8
Introduction Existing Research Inaccessibility Hypothesis Resumptive Relativisers Pronominal Resumptives Nominal Resumptives Relative and Topic Structures Summary
54 55 66 83 95 113 123 130
3
Prepositional Relatives
132
3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7
Introduction Preposition Doubling as Copying Preposition Doubling as Splitting Preposition Intrusion Preposition Doubling and Intrusion as Hypercorrection Preposition Doubling and Intrusion as Speech Errors Summary
132 135 146 154 166 175 188
ix
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x Contents 4
Gapless Relatives
191
4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6
Introduction Stranded Preposition Analyses A Fronted Preposition Analysis Prepositionless Analyses Processing Analyses Summary
191 192 200 214 232 242
Epilogue
243
Glossary and Abbreviations References Index
245 272 310
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Acknowledgements
This book has greatly benefited from invaluable help provided by numerous people. The most important of these are: Chris Collins, Claudia Felser and Oliver Boxell, who worked with me on developing syntactic and processing accounts of relatives with ‘missing’ prepositions (discussed in Chapter 4); Memo Cinque, for commenting on an early draft of a document which was a precursor to chapters 1 and 2 of the present book, and for sharing with me the insights of his own typological research into the syntax of relative clauses; and Tony Kroch for sharing with me data that he collected on resumptive relatives. In addition, I’d like to thank the following people (listed alphabetically, by surname) for helpful observations, ideas, suggestions, references or data: Doug Arnold, Martin Atkinson, Sjef Barbiers, Josef Bayer, Paola Benincà, Bob Borsley, Isabelle Burke, Silvio Cruschina, Peter Culicover, Joseph Galasso, Ángel Gallego, Liliane Haegeman, Roger Hawkins, Alison Henry, Philip Hofmeister, Georgios Ioannou, Ángel Jiménez-Fernández, Mike Jones, Mireia Llinàs-Grau, Rudy Loock, Jim McCloskey, Jamal Ouhalla, Ian Roberts, Tom Roeper, Luigi Rizzi, Louisa Sadler and Julio Villa-García. More specific contributions are acknowledged at appropriate points in the text. My grateful thanks also go to the publishing team at Cambridge University Press, especially the commissioning editor, Andrew Winnard, for encouraging me to produce this volume; the series editor, Neil Smith, for enthusiastic support and helpful suggestions about the organisation and presentation of the text; the copy-editor, Gordon Lee, for help with editing; Shirley Rhodes, for proofreading; and Heather Lings, for compiling the index. And finally, since the data for this book are mainly drawn from recordings I have made of live, unscripted broadcasts on British radio and TV stations, a special word of thanks to all the broadcasters who have not only entertained me enormously over the past decade, but have also provided a key source of data for my research. I can’t thank them all here, but I’d like to single out a few of my favourites: Alan Green, Tim Vickery, Geoff Boycott, Jonathan Agnew and the late Jimmy Armfield, Graham Taylor and Ray Wilkins. xi
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Prologue
This book is a follow-up to my research monograph on Colloquial English published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. It was originally intended to form a chapter of that book, but both Colloquial English and the prospective additional chapter on relative clauses became so long that the publisher suggested that my research on relative clauses should be published as a separate monograph – and this book is the result. As part of the second edition of my textbook Analysing English Sentences (published by Cambridge University Press in 2016), I included a lengthy discussion of the syntax of relative clauses in contemporary English (Radford 2016: 394–438). The discussion mainly focused on the derivation of the filler–gap relatives found in standard varieties of English, e.g. in structures like those bracketed below (from Radford 2016: 394, examples 28a–e): (1)
a. b. c. d. e.
I only work with people [who I can trust —] This is something [which you have to take — seriously] There are places [where they sell counterfeit watches —] They lived in times [when money was tight —] There are reasons [why he kept quiet —]
Clauses like those bracketed above are introduced by a filler which appears to have moved from the gap position (—) to the italicised position at the beginning of the relative clause. The filler is an overt relative pronoun in structures like (1), but is null in that-relatives like ‘I only work with people that I can trust’, and also in zero-relatives like ‘I only work with people I can trust.’ However, for a number of years, I have been collecting data on noncanonical structures found in colloquial English, mainly sourced from recordings of live, unscripted broadcasts on popular British radio and television stations. My broadcast English data contain hundreds of examples of four types of non-canonical relative clause which are in widespread use in colloquial English. 1
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2 Prologue One such type is illustrated by the relative clauses bracketed below: (2)
a. Martin was one of those people [who, everything on the football side, he was responsible for] (Graham Taylor, BBC Radio 5) b. This is a girl [who, in real life, you’d never let her have the keys to your house, right?] (Jeremy Clarkson, BBC2 TV) c. Paul Scholes was one of those players [who you never got to know what his voice sounded like] (Lee Dixon, BBC Radio 5) d. Supermarkets are now making a big thing about selling wonky vegetables, [which years ago they would just have been discarded] (Sean Farrington, BBC Radio 5) e. I hope he doesn’t have to make a decision [which we’ll all debate whether it was wrong or right] (Mark Lawrenson, BBC Radio 5)
The relative clauses bracketed in (2a–2e) above represent a type of structure in which an (italicised) relative pronoun like who/which at the beginning of the bracketed relative clause is reprised by an (underlined) resumptive pronoun like he/her/his/they/it lower down in the clause. I will refer to clauses of this type as resumptive relatives, and will discuss these in detail in Chapter 2. A second type of non-canonical relative occurring in colloquial English is that found in clauses like those bracketed below: (3)
a. It’s the world [in which we live in] (Gary Lineker, BT Sports TV) b. That really was the bedrock [on which that victory was built on] (Darren Fletcher, BBC Radio 5) c. You now have a new Manchester United manager [with which you’ll be dealing with] (Nick Collins, Sky Sports TV) d. They’re selling a series of money-can’t-buy prizes [for which you can bid for on e-Bay] (Richard Keys, Talksport Radio) e. We have made gains in a number of key seats [of which we can be proud of] (Caroline Flint, BBC Radio 4)
These involve a phenomenon widely referred to as preposition doubling, in which an (italicised) preposition followed by a relative pronoun appears at the beginning of the relative clause, and an (underlined) copy of the preposition is found at/near the end of the clause. Alongside doubled preposition structures like those in (3) above, we also find structures like those below which contain two mismatching prepositions: (4)
a. Every sport needs some power house [with which other teams can measure their success by] (Russell Fuller, BBC R5) b. There are issues [on which you agree with the Labour Party leader over] (Norman Smith, BBC1 TV) c. The thing you have to watch with Portugal is the speed [with which they play at] (Andy Townsend, ITV)
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Prologue
3
d. The freedom [in which we played with] was gratifying (Eoin Morgan, Channel 5 TV) e. Things went slightly wonky at Chelsea because of the intensity [in which they were working under] (Ray Wilkins, Talksport Radio)
Structures like (3) and (4) both involve non-canonical ways of relativising a prepositional object: in Chapter 3, I discuss such structures in detail. A further type of relative clause found in colloquial English is illustrated by the structures bracketed below: (5)
a. The main target was to finish ahead of Ferrari, [which we’ve extended our lead by 4 points] (Christian Horner, BBC Radio 5) b. He’s not played for Arsenal for a month, [which he had 90 minutes for Switzerland a week ago] (Commentator, ITV) c. It’s a chance for him to look at one or two others, [who there’s always someone who comes from nowhere] (Matt Holland, Talksport Radio) d. The same can’t be said for Kittel, [who it was a bit messy in the final sprint] (Daniel Lloyd, Eurosport TV) e. He’s a fabulous player [who, given the right conditions and the right management, we could be talking about one of the best players in the world] (Sid Lowe, Talksport Radio)
Relative clauses like those bracketed above are puzzling from the perspective of standard English relatives like those in (1) because they appear not to involve any filler–gap dependency. For this reason, they are commonly referred to as gapless relatives. I discuss these at length in Chapter 4. Accordingly, the main body of the book is structured as follows. In Chapter 1, by way of background, I discuss the structure and derivation of the canonical types of filler–gap relative clause found in standard varieties of English. I then go on to examine the various types of non-canonical relative clause found in my data, looking at resumptive relatives in Chapter 2, prepositional relatives in Chapter 3, and gapless relatives in Chapter 4. This is followed by a short epilogue which provides a brief summary of the main findings arising from my research. After this comes a glossary of key technical terms used in the book (excluding common grammatical terms which will be familiar from introductory textbooks): the Glossary is intended not only for people with a limited linguistic background, but also for linguists who work in a different framework. The Glossary also includes an integral list of abbreviations. It is followed by a list of references to all works cited in the book. As already noted, the data on which my research here is based are mainly drawn from recordings which I have made of popular programmes on British radio and TV stations over the past decade, using live, unscripted broadcasts in
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4 Prologue order to avoid possible prescriptive influences from copy-editors. Typical sources were popular sports broadcasts from BBC Radio 5, BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra, BBC World Service, Talksport Radio, BBC TV, ITV, Sky TV and BT TV. However, the data also come from live, unscripted TV or radio interviews with a wide range of people from all walks of life (including Prince Harry, a fashion designer, an extortionist and so on). Programmes recorded included discussion forums, phone-ins, interviews and sports commentaries. The data were collected in an informal (unscientific) manner and transcribed orthographically by me. In addition, I also made use of some internet-sourced data. For obvious reasons, I excluded utterances containing dysfluencies (e.g. incomplete sentences), as well as structures produced by non-native speakers. My own data are supplemented and complemented by data from the relevant research literature. In addition, I was fortunate enough to have access to a corpus of resumptive relatives collected by Tony Kroch at the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1980s, which Tony kindly made available to me: I shall refer to his data as the Kroch corpus.1 The data on non-canonical relative clauses presented here are of more general interest for (at least) four different reasons. One is that they raise the question of whether such examples are instances of sloppy grammar or fractured English produced by people who have an inadequate mastery of the syntax of ‘proper English’, so that sentences like those in (2–5) have no real structure (or have a ‘wild’ structure not conforming to principles of Universal Grammar/UG). I shall argue strongly against this view here and in favour of the view that the relevant data constitute a compendium which (as Neil Smith points out) is as important – and as enlightening – as data from New Guinea or manuscripts from the Qumran caves. I shall also argue that they have a UGcompliant structure of their own, and that detailed examination of this structure tells us a great deal about syntax and syntactic variation.
1
As should be obvious, there are methodological shortcomings in using a randomly collected set of anecdotal data. For a discussion of the relative merits and reliability of different methods of collecting linguistic data, see Schütze (1996); Cowart (1997); Hoffmann (2011: ch. 2); Weskott & Fanselow (2011); Schütze & Sprouse (2014); Radford (2016: 1–9). On the drawbacks of collecting linguistic data from a corpus (or from the web), see Schütze (2009). For a defence of the use of introspective judgement data rather than other sources of data, see Newmeyer (2003, 2005, 2006a, 2006b) on usage-based data, and Sprouse (2011), Sprouse, Schütze & Almeida (2013), and Sprouse & Almeida (2011a, 2011b; 2012, 2013) on experimental data. For evidence that linguists may give different grammaticality judgements about sentences than non-linguists, see Dąbrowska (2010).
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Prologue
5
A second reason non-canonical relatives like those in (2–5) are interesting is that they raise challenging descriptive, typological and theoretical questions about the nature of relative clauses. For example, could it be that non-canonical resumptive relatives like those in (2) have the same type of movement-based derivation as canonical filler–gap relatives like those in (1), or (more specifically), could they perhaps involve Antecedent Raising (an operation in which the antecedent originates inside the relative clause and from there raises to a position outside it)? Do non-canonical relatives in English reflect the range of typological variation found in other languages? Could it be that gapless relatives like those in (5) represent a type of structure in which the relation between the relative clause and its antecedent is similar to that found in gapless topic structures in colloquial English (as described in Radford 2018: ch. 2)? A third reason non-canonical structures are interesting is that they offer the potential to shed light on the nature of microvariation in English, and thereby contribute to our understanding of microcomparative syntax. They also raise the sociolinguistic issues of whether (some) such structures are restricted to use in certain ‘fringe’ registers or varieties of English, and whether others might be the result of hypercorrection. A fourth reason non-canonical structures are of interest is that they raise the psycholinguistic question of whether (some) such sentences could be ‘slips of the tongue’ (e.g. processing errors arising from memory lapses or blends). For example, could it be that doubled preposition relatives like those in (3) arise when speakers forget whether or not they already spelled out the preposition in front of the wh-pronoun at the beginning of the relative clause? If so, speakers who wrongly think they have not spelled out the preposition at the beginning of the clause will spell out another copy of the preposition in its canonical position at the end of the relative clause, thereby resulting in preposition doubling. This book follows in the footsteps of a burgeoning tradition of work which adopts a theoretical approach to the syntax of non-dialectal register variation. In this sense, it is cast in the mould of research on registers such as diary styles (Haegeman 1990a, 1990b, 1997, 2000b, 2013; Matushansky 1995; Horsey 1998; Haegeman & Ihsane 1999, 2001), newspaper headlines (Simon-Vandenbergen 1981; Stowell 1991, 1996), recipe books and instruction manuals (Haegeman 1987, Massam 1989, Massam & Roberge 1989, Culy 1996, Sigurdsson & Maling 2007), note-taking (Janda 1985), telegrams and text messages (Barton 1998), telephone conversations (Hopper 1992), online blogs (Teddiman & Newman 2010), and emails/postcards
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6 Prologue (Nariyama 2004, 2006). By virtue of focusing on a specific phenomenon (relative clauses), it is also in the same mould as research on specific syntactic phenomena such as subject, object and article drop (Weir, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2014, 2017), non-standard patterns of agreement (Adger & Smith 2010), and extra be constructions (Massam 2017). However, the present book is unique in that (apart from my own 2018 book on Colloquial English), there are no existing monographs or textbooks on the syntax of colloquial registers of standard languages. Overall, this book has four main goals. One is the goal of dispelling the prescriptive myth that colloquial English is an inferior form of speech characterised by sloppiness and an absence of ‘proper grammar’. The second is the descriptive goal of increasing awareness of the range of structural variation found in non-dialectal forms of colloquial English, and showing that this variation can be characterised in formal syntactic terms. The third is the theoretical goal of showing how the syntax of non-canonical relative clauses can contribute to debates in contemporary theoretical linguistics. And the fourth is the methodological goal of showing how a usage-based approach can contribute an invaluable source of data which complements other (e.g. introspective and experimental) approaches and leads to a deeper understanding of the nature of syntactic structure and variation in contemporary colloquial English. I hope this book will inspire, inform and guide researchers working on relative clauses, and serve as a useful source for (graduate or advanced undergraduate) research seminars on syntactic theory and description, and on English syntax. I also hope that you will have as much fun reading it as I had collecting and collating the data!
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1 Background
1.1
Introduction
This chapter provides an introduction to the main types of relative clause found in standard registers and varieties of English, which typically contain an (overt or null) relativiser associated with a gap lower down in the structure. I begin by presenting a brief typology of different types of relative clause in §1.2, focusing mainly on three types which will be most relevant to the discussion of relative clauses in colloquial English in chapters 2–4 (namely restrictive, appositive, and kind relatives). In §1.3, I turn to examine the syntax of the clause periphery in relatives, before turning in §1.4 to look at whether some relative clauses have a truncated peripheral structure. In §1.5, I examine the nature of the relativisers that introduce relative clauses, while in §1.6 I turn to look at the derivation of the (filler–) gap relatives found in standard varieties of English. In §1.7, I summarise the overall contents of this chapter. 1.2
Types of Relative Clause
The sentences in (1) below illustrate two different types of (bracketed) relative clause found in English (and more widely): (1)
a. The allegations [which/that/ø Trump made during his campaign] turned out to be fake b. These allegations, [which/*that/*ø Trump made during his campaign], turned out to be fake
The relative clause highlighted in (1a) is said to be restrictive because it restricts the class of entities denoted by the (underlined) head/antecedent to those which have the property described in the relative clause (e.g. the allegations referred to in 1a are restricted to those made by Trump). By contrast, the relative clause highlighted in (1b) is said to be appositive, and typically serves as a parenthetical comment or afterthought. (Note, incidentally, that I use an 7
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8 Background asterisk to denote a sentence judged by me or others to be ungrammatical, rather than to denote one which does not occur in my data.) In addition to this difference in their semantic function, there are a number of other differences between restrictive and appositive relatives. For one thing, restrictive relative clauses like that in (1a) can be introduced by an overt wh-relativiser (like which/who/where/when/why), or by an overt complementiser (like that), or by a zero/null relativiser (here denoted as ø); by contrast, appositive relatives like that in (1b) can only be introduced by an overt wh-relativiser.1 A second difference is that appositive relative clauses are set off in a separate intonation group from the rest of the sentence (this being marked by the commas enclosing the relative clause in 1b), whereas there is no such intonation break between the relative clause and its antecedent in the case of restrictives: this reflects a difference in structure, in that (in the terminology of Cinque 2008) restrictive clauses are integrated with the antecedent (in the sense that they are contained within an NP that also contains the antecedent), whereas appositive clauses in English are not. This lack of integration is reflected in the fact that an appositive relative clause can also serve as an independent sentence – as is the case with the second (italicised) which-clause below: (2)
The mail that came early yesterday, which was a surprise, held good news. Which really lifted Robert’s spirits (Reid 1997: 7)
A third difference is that only an appositive relative like that italicised in (3a) below can occur after an unmodified proper name like Chomsky, not a restrictive relative like that italicised in (3b): (3)
1
a. He finally got to meet Chomsky, who he had long admired b. *He finally got to meet Chomsky that he had long admired
However, my data include the following example of a (resumptive) relative that-clause seemingly used appositively: (i) I’m gonna start with this one, that I don’t think that it got the coverage that it deserves (Jason Cundy, Talksport Radio) Similarly, Reid (1997: 246) reports potential counterexamples like that below from a corpus she collected of spoken Australian English, in which what appears to be an appositive relative clause is introduced by that: (ii) You actually do become part of the UN, that does all those things See also Jacobsson (1994), and examples on Linguist List 7.1266, 12 September 1996.
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1.2 Types of Relative Clause 9 Conversely (as observed by Smith 1964) only a restrictive relative clause like that italicised in (4a) below can modify a quantified expression like that underlined below, not an appositive like that italicised in (4b): (4)
a. Every student that took my syntax course enjoyed it b. *Every student, who took my syntax course, enjoyed it
Similarly relative clauses like those italicised/underlined below can be stacked if restrictive (as in 5a), but not if appositive (as in 5b): (5)
a. The one person that I met that really impressed me was Chomsky b. *Chomsky, who I met in Cambridge, who really impressed me, always replies to emails
Another difference is that appositive relatives like that bracketed in (6a) below allow pied-piping of the kind of quantificational material underlined, whereas restrictives like that in (6b) do not: (6)
a. Twenty demonstrators were arrested, some of whom the police subsequently charged b. *Lawyers have been hired to represent the demonstrators some of whom the police subsequently charged
Furthermore, appositives (but not restrictives) can involve which used as a determiner modifying an (underlined) noun expression in archaic registers of English, as the following examples cited by Cinque (2008: 113) illustrate: (7)
a. He rode twenty miles to see her picture in the house of a stranger, which stranger politely insisted on his acceptance of it (Jespersen 1949: 126) b. . . . a young woman with a wedding-ring and a baby, which baby she carried about with her when serving at the table (Jespersen ibid.) c. The French procured allies, which allies proved of the utmost importance (Poutsma 1914: 961)
In addition, whereas restrictives have nominal antecedents, appositive clauses can have other types of antecedent as well – like the constituents underlined in the following examples from McCawley (1981: 118):2 (8)
2
a. Sam is at home, which is where Sue is b. Tom played basketball yesterday from 5:00 to 7:30, which is exactly when the committee meeting was held c. It appalls me that Betty was fired, which I hadn’t been expecting
While this is true of English, it does not appear to hold universally: Memo Cinque (personal communication) points out that appositives in languages lacking relative pronouns can only modify DP.
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10 Background Furthermore, whereas restrictives are typically declarative in force, appositives can express a range of alternative force types, as illustrated below: (9)
a. He has massive gambling debts, which is he really in control of? b. He used the F-word on live TV, which how lucky he was to get away with! c. I’ve forwarded the document, which please be careful to double check d. He made a silly mistake, which let’s not make a big deal about
Thus, the appositive clause is interrogative in force in (9a), exclamative in (9b), imperative in (9c) and hortative in (9d). Overall, then, we have evidence of clear syntactic, semantic, lexical and phonological differences between restrictive and appositive relatives.3 A third type of relative clause (which at first sight seems to be a sub-type of restrictive relatives, but which shares some properties with appositives, and has unique syntactic and semantic characteristics of its own) involves clauses which are termed ‘kind clauses’ by Prince (1990, 1995). A typical example (adapted from Prince 1995) is the relative clause italicised below: (10)
He’s a guy who/that gets into a lot of fights
Prince notes that the relative clause in such cases describes a kind, and that kind relatives have an interpretation akin to that of such clauses (so that the relative clause in 10 is paraphrasable as ‘of such a kind that he gets into lots of fights’). They seem to correspond fairly closely to a class of clauses which McCawley (1981) termed pseudo-relatives, like those italicised below: (11)
a. There are many Americans who like opera b. I’ve never met an American who doesn’t like pizza
McCawley claims that pseudo-relatives are typically found in existential sentences like like (11a), or after a verb like see/meet/hear of/run into in sentences like (11b). He notes that they differ from restrictives (inter alia) in that extraction is more readily permitted out of a pseudo-relative clause like that in (12a) below than out of a restrictive like (12b): (12)
3
a. Violence is something that there are many Americans who condone b. *Violence is something that Snead is an Englishman who condones
For further discussion of the properties of appositive relatives, see Jespersen (1949), Emonds (1979), Cornilescu (1981), McCawley (1981), Huddleston (1984), Fabb (1990), Borsley (1997), Reid (1997), Khalifa (1999), de Vries (2002), Huddleston & Pullum (2002), Loock (2003, 2005, 2007a, 2010), Arnold (2004, 2007), Cinque (2008), and Citko (2008).
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In more recent work, Benincà (2003, 2012b), and Benincà and Cinque (2014) have termed such relative clauses ‘kind-defining’. They claim that they differ from restrictives in that ‘the proposition expressed by the relative is not presupposed to be true’ and (unlike restrictives and appositives) ‘the head of the relative is non-referential (since it is a predicate)’ (Benincà & Cinque 2014: 270–1). They ‘do not have the function of narrowing down the reference of the head noun, which can remain undetermined’ (2014: 261), but rather serve to ‘mark the semantic class which the head belongs to’ (2014: 262). I shall use Prince’s original (and more succinct) term ‘kind relatives’ in the discussion hereafter. Benincà & Cinque identify a number of properties of kind relatives which differentiate them from restrictives and appositives, illustrating these with Italian data including (13, 14, 16) below. One such property is that (unlike restrictives and appositives) kind relatives can be irrealis (e.g. subjunctive or infinitival) – as in the examples in (13) below (where the subscript subj marks a subjunctive form, and inf an infinitive form): (13) a. Mario è l’unico [che abbia risolto il problema] Mario is the.only that haveSUBJ solved the problem ‘Mario is the only one that’s solved the problem’ b. Cercava una segretaria [a cui affidareINF il lavoro di traduzione] He.sought a secretary to whom to.entrust the work of translation ‘He was looking for a secretary to entrust the translation work to’
In addition, kind relatives have different distributional properties from restrictives and appositives, in that they follow a restrictive relative clause like that underlined in (14a) below, but precede an appositive like that underlined in (14b):4
4
Data from the Kroch corpus suggest that the same ordering holds in English, since it contains 27 examples (like the first two examples below) in which an antecedent is modified both by a restrictive gap relative and a resumptive kind relative, and in every one of these cases, the restrictive relative precedes the kind relative – and this is also true of the example in (iii) from my own data: (i)
There’s a train [you can take] [that it stops in Chicago] (Ann Houston; Kroch corpus) (ii) I have a friend [that I talk to] [that we left-dislocate and topicalize all the time] (Wendy C., Kroch corpus) (iii) Everywhere you look you can see someone [that you trust] [that you know they’re behind you] (Deli Alli, Talksport Radio)
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12 Background (14) a. Quello è un ragazzo che conosco che non esita mica a rischiare That is a young.man that I.know that not hesitates at.all to risk ‘That is a young man that I know that does not hesitate at all to take risks’ b. Quello è un ragazzo coraggioso che non esita mica a rischiare, That is a young.man brave that not hesitates at.all to risk le azioni del quale, tra parentesi, mi hanno sempre colpito The actions of.the which, between parethenses, me have always struck ‘That is a brave young man that does not hesitate to take risks, whose actions, incidentally, have always impressed me’
Furthermore, kind relatives share a number of properties with appositives that differentiate them from restrictives. For example, kind relatives (like appositives, but unlike restrictives) can have independent illocutionary force – as illustrated by the examples in (15) below from my broadcast English data. Thus, whereas finite restrictive relatives are typically declarative in force, kind relatives can be interrogative in force (as in 15a, 15b) below, or imperative (as in 15c, 15d), or hortative as in (15e): (15)
a. It’s one of those [that do we just push to one side?] (Brian Laws, BBC Radio 5) b. It’s one of them situations now [where Harry, what does he do?] (Ray Parlour, Talksport Radio) c. It’s one of those things [where imagine that they stay in the second division for 3 years!] (Tim Vickery, BBC Radio 5) d. The top speed, [which please don’t try to reach!], is 220 miles an hour (Ferrari test driver, BBC Radio 5) e. It’s one of those days [where, let’s forget about this!] (Commentator, Sky Sports TV)
In addition, kind relatives differ from restrictives (but resemble appositives) in that they cannot be stacked – as the following Italian example illustrates: (16)
*Quello è un ragazzo che deve essere sempre stato coraggioso That is a young.man that must be always been brave che non esita mica a rischiare that not hesitates at.all to risk ‘That’s a young man that must have always been brave that does not hesitate to take risks’
A further property of kind relatives identified by Benincà and Cinque is that (in some language varieties) they can allow the verb in the relative clause to agree with the subject of the relative clause rather than with the relative clause head,
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as in the following example (from 14th century Ligurian, quoted in Parry 2007: 26, fn. 16.):5 (17)
He’ som quella che lo portay nove meysi e che lo norigay I am the.one that him I.bore nine months and that him I.fed com lo me’ layte with the my milk ‘I am the one that bore him for 9 months and that fed him with my milk’
Benincà and Cinque conjecture that absence of agreement with the relative clause head in such structures may reflect ‘the lack of referential features in the endowment of the syntactic head of the relative clause’ (2014: 276). While the main focus in this book will be on the three types of relative clause mentioned above, there are a number of other types of relative clause which I will not have much to say about here, because they did not prove to be a productive source in my data for the resumptive, prepositional and gapless relative structures discussed in chapters 2–4. These include infinitival relatives like those bracketed below: (18)
a. London is becoming a cheaper place [in which to live and work], according to a new survey b. London is becoming a cheaper place [to live and work in], according to a new survey c. London is becoming a cheaper place [for people to live and work in], according to a new survey
For the same reason, I also have little to say about contact relatives like those bracketed below, which appear to be dialectal or variety-specific structures, insofar as no examples of them occurred in a corpus study of restrictive relatives in standard varieties of English analysed by Hinrichs et al. (2015),
5
A similar phenomenon is found in resumptive kind relatives in colloquial English, as illustrated below: (i) I’m the kind of guy [that I like to ask a lot of questions] (readingeagle.com) (ii) . . . I’m the kind of guy [that I like to play carefree a little bit] . . . (Willie Byrn, quoted in The Roanoke Times). (iii) I’m the type of person [I like to be positive] (unidentified TV/radio speaker, Kroch corpus) (iv) Well you’re the kind of guy [that, you know, when you can take a limo, you’ll walk] (Kevin Newman, interview on CTV news) (v) . . . I think we’re people [that we love the music, we love the fans and we’re taking advantage of being able to express our opinions . . .] (MC Logic, nationofbillions.com)
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14 Background and only the three examples cited in (19c–19e below occurred in my broadcast English data: (19)
a. We had this French girl [came to stay] (Berizzi 2001: 104) b. There’s a man in our street [has a Jaguar] (Miller & Fernandez-Vest, 2006: 51) c. He’s brought 4 lads in [are explosive] (Joe Cole, BT Sport TV) d. This is a side [plays in a similar vein] (Danny Mills, Sky Sports TV) e. When you’ve got a player [doesn’t want to be there], you’ve got to get rid of them (Jamie Redknapp, Sky Sports TV)
Also playing little part in the present study for the same reason are amount relative structures such as those bracketed below: (20)
a. They ate [what food there was] b. They ate [the food there was]
and free relative clauses like those bracketed in (21): (21)
a. I never believed [what he told me] b. The police searched for [what(ever) clues they could find]
While there is a considerable amount of research literature on structures like those in (18–21),6 they will not be discussed in any detail here, for the reasons already given. As will be apparent from the discussion above, the three types of relative clause which constitute the main focus of the present study are finite appositive, restrictive and kind relatives (henceforth referred to as ‘FARK’ relatives for
6
On infinitial relatives, see Breivik (1997), Dubinsky (1997), Geisler (1998), Girard & Malan (1999), Akiyama (2002), Castillo (2009), Yang (2009), Hackl & Nissenbaum (2012), Simonin (2012), Bylinina (2013), Douglas (2016). On contact relatives, see Bever & Langendoen (1972), Erdmann (1980), Harris & Vincent (1980), Weisler (1980), Shnukal, (1981), Napoli (1982), Quirk et al. (1985), Lambrecht (1988), Rizzi (1990), Doherty (1993, 1994), Biber et al. (1999), Huddleston & Pullum (2002), Tagliamonte (2002), Herrmann (2003), and Haegeman et al. (2015). On amount relatives, see Carlson (1977), Heim (1987), Grosu & Landman (1998), von Fintel (1999), Herdan (2008), McNally (2008), Watanabe (2013), Meier (2015), Douglas (2016), Kotek (2016), Patterson & Caponigro (2016). On free relatives, see Hirschbühler (1976, 1978), Bresnan & Grimshaw (1978), Groos & van Riemsdijk (1981), Harbert (1983), Hirschbühler & Rivero (1983), Borsley (1984), Huddleston (1984), Larson (1987), McCawley (1988), Battye (1989), Grosu (1989, 1996, 2003), Kayne (1994), Rooryck (1994), Jacobson (1995), Reid (1997), Citko (2000, 2002, 2004, 2008, 2011), Izvorski (2001), Vogel (2001), Caponigro (2002), de Vries (2002), van Riemsdijk (2005), Donati (2006), Caponigro & Pearl (2008, 2009), Nakamura (2009), Donati & Cecchetto (2011), Ott (2011), Benincà (2012a), Bertollo & Cavall (2012), Caponigro, Torrence & Cisneros (2013), Radford (2016: 464–70) and Cinque (2017).
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succinctness). In the remainder of this chapter, I turn to consider a range of aspects of the structure of FARK relatives in standard varieties of English. 1.3
The Structure of Relative Clauses
This section focuses on the structure of relative clauses, but by way of background information, I’ll begin by taking a brief look at the structure of clauses more generally. Within the framework used here (dating back to work in the 1970s and 1980s), it is assumed that clauses are built up by combining words together to form phrases, and phrases together to form clauses/sentences, so that clauses comprise a number of different layers of structure. Phrases are formed by merging (i.e. combining) a head word with a following constituent termed its complement, and the resulting structure can be extended into an even larger phrase of the same type by merging it with a preceding constituent termed its specifier, so that phrases have the structure (specifier)+head+complement. To illustrate what all this means in more concrete terms, consider the structure of the clause produced by speaker B in the dialogue below: (22)
speaker a: Why did the twins have bruises? What did their mother say? speaker b: That they had both fallen down the stairs
On the assumptions made here, merging the determiner/D the with its complement stairs forms the determiner phrase/DP the stairs. Merging the preposition/P down with its complement the stairs forms the prepositional phrase/PP down the stairs. Merging the verb/V fallen with its complement down the stairs and its specifier both forms the verb phrase/VP both fallen down the stairs. Merging the (past) tense auxiliary/T had with its complement both fallen down the stairs and its specifier they forms the tense phrase/TP they had both fallen down the stairs. Merging the complementiser/C that with its complement they had both fallen down the stairs forms the complementiser phrase that they had both fallen down the stairs. On this view, the sentence produced by speaker b in (22) has the structure shown in simplified form below: (23)
[CP [C that] [TP they [T had] [VP both [V fallen] [PP [P down] [DP [D the] stairs]]]]]
Each phrase has a head and is said to be a projection of its head, in the sense that the head projects its properties onto the phrase: e.g. a prepositional phrase like down the stairs is a prepositional phrase (and not a noun phrase, for example) because its head is a preposition (not a noun). Consequently,
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16 Background a prepositional phrase/PP can equally be termed a ‘prepositional projection’, a complementiser phrase/CP can equally be termed a ‘complementiser projection’, a tense phrase/TP can equally be termed a ‘tense projection’, and so on. That part of a phrase which comprises the head and any specifier it has is termed the edge of the phrase. Thus, the edge of the DP the stairs in (23) comprises its head D the; the edge of the PP down the stairs comprises its head P down; the edge of the VP both fallen down the stairs comprises the head V fallen and its specifier both; the edge of the TP they had both fallen down the stairs comprises the head T-auxiliary had and its specifier/subject they; and the edge of the CP that they had both fallen down the stairs comprises the head C that. A key assumption of work in this framework is that constituents that are present in the syntax (and play an important role in the semantics) can sometimes be unpronounced in the phonology (or, to use a technical term, they can be given a silent spellout/null spellout in the phonology). For example, the constituents enclosed in below can optionally be silent/ unpronounced: (24)
a. b. c. d. e.
mustn’t take myself too seriously you hungry? You can leave it there Mary is shopping, and John playing football John said he would do it, but he didn’t say when
For example, the first word in sentences like (24a, 24b) can be ‘clipped’ in rapid speech and hence be silent. In (24c), there is the complement of the preposition in, and the preposition can optionally be given a silent spellout. In (24d), the second occurrence of the tense auxiliary is can be given a silent spellout by a form of ellipsis termed Gapping (so called because it leaves a ‘gap’ in the middle of the sentence). In (24e), everything following the word when can be given a silent spellout by a type of ellipsis known as ‘Sluicing’. Silent constituents are known as ‘empty categories’, and they play an extensive (and important) role in contemporary work in syntax. There are two main parts to the structure of a clause: the propositional component (comprising the subject and everything following it), and the periphery (comprising everything preceding the subject). I will have little to say about the propositional component of clauses here, and simply assume that (as in 23 above) it has the status of a TP constituent. Instead, I will focus on the structure of the clause periphery. This is the locus of complementisers (i.e. clause-introducing particles like that/whether/if) and hence in work dating back to 1980, the periphery was taken to comprise a CP constituent
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1.3 The Structure of Relative Clauses
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(i.e. a complementiser phrase) – as in (23) above. The periphery is also the locus of fronted constituents like those highlighted in the clauses bracketed below (where % indicates that only some speakers allow use of that in whquestions): (25)
I am wondering . . . a. %[what kind of plan that he has concocted] b. [what kind of plan he has concocted] c. [what kind of plan has he concocted]
Here, the interrogative wh-phrase what kind of plan originates as the complement of the verb concocted, but subsequently moves to the italicised position at the front of the bracketed clause in (25a), to a position where it precedes the complementiser that (for people like me who allow use of that). This suggests that the wh-phrase moves to the specifier position in the CP headed by that, so that the wh-clause in (25a) has the structure shown in simplified form below (where ― marks the gap left behind by movement of the italicised wh-phrase to the front of the clause): (26)
[CP what kind of plan [C that] [TP he [T has] concocted ―]]
If we make the plausible assumption that the wh-phrase moves to spec-CP (i.e. the specifier position within CP) in (25a), structural symmetry considerations suggest that it moves to the same spec-CP position in (25b). We can then suppose that the head C constituent of CP contains a null counterpart of that (below denoted as ø), so that the bracketed clause in (25b) has the following simplified structure: (27)
[CP what kind of plan [C ø] [TP he [T has] concocted ―]]
Here we see the importance of empty categories, since CP in (27) is taken to be headed by a null complementiser ø. Structural symmetry considerations further suggest that the wh-phrase also occupies spec-CP in (25c) as well. And since the inverted auxiliary is positioned between the wh-phrase and the subject he, it is plausible to suppose that the inverted auxiliary has moved into the head C position of CP in (25c), so that the bracketed clause has the structure below, with arrows showing the two movements involved (the outer arrow marking Wh-Movement, and the inner one marking Auxiliary Inversion): (28)
[CP what kind of plan [C has] [TP he [T — ] concocted —]]
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18 Background What this brief discussion illustrates is that in work dating back to the Government and Binding model of Chomsky (1981) and carried over to the Barriers model of Chomsky (1986) and Minimalist Program of Chomsky (1995), peripheral constituents (including complementisers, and fronted words and phrases) were taken to be housed within a CP projection.7 A potential problem for the CP analysis of the clause periphery is posed by clauses which contain multiple peripheral constituents, like that bracketed below: (29)
You know [that, in good times or bad, that I will be always there for you]
In the CP model of the clause periphery, the periphery of such clauses is taken to contain two (or more) different CP constituents (or, more technically, to involve CP recursion), so that the bracketed complement clause in (29) above has the structure shown below: (30)
[CP1 [C1 that] [CP2 in good times or bad [C2 that] I will always be there for you]]
Each of the CP constituents in (30) is treated as a projection of the complementiser that, and conversely the complementiser serves as the head of each CP. Indeed, some would argue that the phrase in good times or bad is contained in another CP which is headed by a null complementiser. A more articulated approach to the syntax of the clause periphery has been developed in work by Luigi Rizzi dating back to the 1990s8 and subsequently refined by many other researchers.9 This approach has been termed 7
8
9
For a detailed discussion of the history of the treatment of the clause periphery in generative grammar, see Radford (2018), ch. 1. See Rizzi (1996, 1997, 2000a, 2000b, 2001, 2004a, 2004b, 2005, 2006a, 2006b, 2006c, 2010, 2011, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2014a, 2014b, 2015a, 2015b); Rizzi & Shlonsky (2006, 2007); Cinque & Rizzi (2008, 2010a); Rizzi & Cinque (2016); Rizzi & Bocci (2017). These include Aboh (2004, 2005, 2006, 2010); Badan (2007); Badan & Del Gobbo (2010); Baltin (2010); Belletti (2004a, 2004b, 2009); Benincà (2001, 2006, 2010, 2012a, 2012b); Benincà & Cinque (2010); Benincà & Munaro (2010); Benincà & Poletto (2004); Bianchi & Frascarelli (2010); Biloa (2013); Bocci (2004, 2007, 2009, 2013); Cardinaletti (2004, 2009); Cinque (2002); Cruschina (2006, 2008, 2010a, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2012); Cruschina & Remberger (2008); Danckaert (2011, 2012); Demonte & Fernández-Soriano (2009, 2013, 2014); Durrleman (2008); Endo (2007, 2014, 2015a, 2015b, 2017); Franco (2009); Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl (2007); Frascarelli & Puglielli (2010); Garzonio (2005); Grewendorf (2002); Grewendorf & Poletto (2009); Haegeman (2000a, 2003, 2004, 2006a, 2006b, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2012); Jayaseelan (2008); Jiménez-Fernández (2011, 2015); Krapova (2002); Krapova & Cinque (2008); Laenzlinger (1999); Legate (2002); Munaro (2003); Nye (2013); Paoli (2003, 2007); Paul (2005, 2014); Pearce (1999); Poletto (2000); Puskás (2000); Roberts (2004); Roussou (2000); Salvi (2005); Shlonsky (1997, 2010, 2014); Shlonsky & Soare (2011), Speas & Tenny (2003); Torrence (2013); Tsai (2008); Villa-García (2010, 2011a, 2011b, 2012a, 2012b, 2012c, 2015); Villalba (2000). For overviews of the relevant literature, see Cinque & Rizzi (2010a), Shlonsky (2010), Rizzi (2013a), Rizzi & Cinque (2016), Rizzi & Bocci (2017).
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cartographic since its aim is to devise a ‘map of the left periphery’ (Rizzi 1997: 282). Cartographers argue for the need to distinguish between a number of distinct types of peripheral projection in order to account for differences between them (e.g. in respect of the kinds of constituents they house and their relative ordering). On this view, instead of saying that (e.g.) peripheral topics, focused constituents and clause modifiers are all positioned on the edge of CP, each type of peripheral constituent is taken to be positioned on the edge of a dedicated projection (i.e. one dedicated to housing a specific kind of peripheral constituent), so that topics are positioned on the edge of a topic projection/TOPP, focused constituents on the edge of a focus projection/FOCP, clause-modifying constituents on the edge of a modifier projection/MODP, and so on. On one implementation of this idea, a clause like that bracketed in (31a) below would have the structure shown in simplified form in (31b): (31)
a. He said [that his password, on no account, normally, would he divulge (it) to anyone] b. [FORCEP that [TOPP his password [FOCP on no account [MODP normally [FINP would [TP he divulge (it) to anyone]]]]]]
Here, the complementiser that is positioned on the edge of a (declarative) force phrase/FORCEP, the topic his password on the edge of TOPP, the focused negative phrase on no account on the edge of FOCP, the adverbial modifier normally on the edge of MODP, and the inverted finite auxiliary would on the edge of a finiteness phrase/FINP. On Rizzi’s analysis, the periphery of all (non-defective/non-truncated) clauses typically begins with FORCEP and ends with FINP, and may optionally contain a range of other peripheral projections positioned between the two (like TOPP, FOCP, and MODP in 31b). The following template (adapted in inconsequential ways from Rizzi 2015a) shows the kinds of constituent that can occur in the periphery (with a star indicating that one or more projections of the relevant type can occur in the relevant position, and INTP being an interrogative projection which can house interrogative complementisers like if/whether and the interrogative expression how come according to Shlonsky & Soare 2011): (32)
FORCEP > TOPP* > INTP > TOPP* > FOCP > TOPP* > MODP* > TOPP* > FINP
Given that the cartographic approach in effect splits CP into a number of separate peripheral projections (FORCEP, TOPP, FOCP, FINP etc.), it has become widely known as the ‘split-CP’ approach. An incidental point to note is that within the cartographic framework, subjects are taken by some
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20 Background (e.g. Rizzi & Shlonsky 2006, 2007) to occupy a separate projection between FINP and TP which I shall term SUBJP (so that the subject he in 31b would be on the edge of SUBJP rather than on the edge of TP).10 For descriptive purposes, I shall generally adopt cartographic labels in discussion of the clause periphery in my exposition throughout the book, except when discussing analyses explicitly formulated within the CP framework. Although the CP and split-CP/cartographic approaches are generally considered to be different in kind, they can be argued to be extensionally equivalent, in that, for example, a FOCP can equivalently be analysed as a CP with a C head carrying a focus feature. In the light of the (brief) outline of the structure of clauses presented above, let’s examine the structure of relative clauses, beginning with the question of where wh-relativisers (like which/who/where/when/why) are positioned. In general, these occupy the (italicised) initial position within the (bracketed) relative clause, and thus precede other peripheral constituents, like those underlined below: (33)
a. We showed a lot of spirit, enterprise, endeavour and heart [which on occasions you need to get you through games like this] (canaries.co.uk) b. This is the stage [where big players, they produce] (Steve McClaren, Sky Sports TV) c. It’s a demonstration of modern football, [where time, you just don’t get] (Brendan Rogers, Sky Sports TV) d. This is purely an admin charge by FedEx, [which at no point did I agree to paying] (forums.moneysavingexpert.com) e. A university is the kind of place [where, that kind of behaviour, under no circumstances will the authorities tolerate] (adapted from Radford 2009a: 327)
Given that the template in (32) specifies that FORCEP is the highest head in the clause periphery and precedes all other peripheral projections, it is tempting to follow Rizzi (1997: 298) in concluding that relativisers are positioned on the edge of FORCEP, and serve to type the overall clause as relative – an analysis which is also adopted in Radford (2004a, 2004b, 2009a, 2009b) and Haegeman (2012). Given this (and other reasonable assumptions), it will then follow that the FORCEP housing the relativisers which/where will precede the clausal modifier on occasions on the edge of MODP in (33a), the dislocated topic big players in (33b) and the fronted topics time/that kind of behaviour on the edge 10
Shlonsky (2014) takes the Subject Projection to be a projection of a person feature, while Rizzi (2015a) takes it to be a projection of a D head; however, I shall use the more familiar label SUBJP here.
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of TOPP in (33c/33e),11 the focused negative phrases at no point/under no circumstances on the edge of FOCP in (33d/33e), and the inverted finite auxiliaries did/will on the edge of FINP in (33d/33e). If so, the relative clause in (33e) above will have a peripheral structure which includes the peripheral projections bracketed below:12 (34)
[FORCEP where, [TOPP that kind of behaviour, [FOCP under no circumstances [FINP will the authorities tolerate]]]]
If the FORCEP projection housing relative where serves to mark the clause as relative in type, we can suppose that the relative clause is interpreted as declarative by default (i.e. by virtue of not containing an interrogative, exclamative or imperative constituent).13 However, the FORCEP analysis is called into question by sentences such as the following in which the bracketed relative clauses are interrogative rather than declarative in interpretation, as we see from the fact that they contain an (underlined) inverted auxiliary and/or (italicised) interrogative wh-constituent: (35)
a. Mike’s leadership was second to none, [without which how else could six novices laugh our way through ten days at minus 40?] (polarchallenge.org) b. It’s one of them situations now [where Harry, what does he do?] (Ray Parlour, Talksport Radio) c. Joe Hart has come out to look at the wall, [which, Negredo, is he gonna join?] (Clive Tyldesley, Sky Sports TV) d. This is a vital piece of evidence [which how come the police overlooked]?
If, as argued by Rizzi (1997: 298, 325) and Haegeman & Guéron (1999: 345, 526), wh-questions with Auxiliary Inversion involve movement of a focused interrogative wh-constituent to the edge of FOCP and if (as argued by Radford & Iwasaki 2015 and Radford 2018) Auxiliary Inversion involves movement of 11
12
13
For expository purposes, I set aside here the possibility that different types of topic are housed in different types of peripheral projection. For discussion of the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties of different kinds of topic, see Gundel (1975, 1985, 1988), Keenan & Schieffelin (1976a, 1976b), Prince (1981a, 1981b, 1984, 1985, 1997), Reinhart (1981), Ward & Prince (1991), Geluykens (1992), Lambrecht (1994), Ziv (1994), Büring (1997, 1999, 2003), Birner & Ward (1998a, 1998b), Portner & Yabushita (1998), Gregory & Michaelis (2001), CasiellesSuárez (2004), Frey (2004, 2005), Shaer & Frey (2004), Manetta (2007), Bianchi & Frascarelli (2010), Miyagawa (2017), and Radford (2018, ch. 2). In general, I shall simplify structural representations here by showing only (relevant) maximal projections/phrases, not heads or intermediate projections (unless these need to be shown for some expository reason). See Bošković (1997), Roberts and Roussou (2002) and Franks (2005) for elaboration of the idea that a finite clause is interpreted as declarative by default if not marked in some way as being interrogative, exclamative or imperative.
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22 Background a finite auxiliary to the edge of FINP, the relative clause bracketed in (35b) will have the peripheral structure shown in simplified form below: (36)
[FORCEP where [TOPP Harry [FOCP what [FINP does he do]]]]
(36) is compatible with the claim made by Rizzi (1997: 291) that ‘Both TOP and FOC are compatible with a preceding relative operator’, and with the template in (32). The relative clause in (35d) will have a slightly different derivation if how come is positioned on the edge of an interrogative projection/ INTP. On this view, relative clauses are FORCEP constituents containing an (overt or null) relativiser on the edge of FORCEP which types the overall clause as relative. However, a potential problem posed by structures like (34, 36) is the following. A key assumption underlying Rizzi’s work is that the FORCE head in a clause marks the (declarative, interrogative or imperative etc.) force of the clause: consequently in (36) it will mark the clause as interrogative. However, in (36) the FORCEP projection also serves to house the relative pronoun where, and so serves the additional function of typing the clause as relative. But if this is so, the FORCE head in (36) will carry two different interpretable features (i.e. two features that contribute to determining the semantic interpretation of the clause) – namely an interrogative force feature and a relative type feature. The problem this poses is that it violates a featural uniqueness principle posited by Cinque & Rizzi (2008), which can be outlined informally as follows:14 (37)
One Feature One Head Principle Each functional head carries only one interpretable feature
It follows from (37) that if the FORCE head in (36) marks interrogative force, it cannot also mark relative clause type. But if (36) is not the right structure for the periphery of this kind of sentence, what is? A plausible hypothesis is that on top of the FORCEP constituent in (36) there is a separate clause-typing projection marking the clause as relative in type (here denoted as RELP); and indeed this is the assumption made by Rizzi in more recent work (2005, 2013a, 2015a). This RELP constituent will be the highest projection in the periphery of a relative clause (in order to be adjacent to the antecedent in non-extraposed restrictive relatives), and will house 14
Functional heads are constituents like C, T, D which mark grammatical properties (like force, tense, definiteness, etc.). Kayne (2016: 18) proposes a generalised version of (37) in which he drops the word ‘interpretable’, and hypothesises that ‘There is no bundling of syntactic features into a single head.’
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1.3 The Structure of Relative Clauses
23
a relativiser which serves to type the clause as relative. If so, the relative adverb where in (35b) would not be on the edge of FORCEP, but rather on the edge of RELP – as shown in simplified form below: (38)
[RELP where [FORCEP ø [TOPP Harry [FOCP what [FINP does he do]]]]]
Such an assumption would be broadly consistent with work by Nye (2013) arguing for a TYPEP projection (REL being a specific kind of TYPE head). Further evidence lending potential support for this view comes from exclamative relative clauses such as the following (from Radford 2018: 93): (39)
a. We were put up in a hotel [where, when we arrived, what a nasty surprise there was in store for us!] b. It was a war [in which, what unspeakable acts of brutality people committed in the name of freedom!] c. It was a time [when, how happy people were to lead a simple life!] d. He was a politician [who, when his career stalled, how quickly the press turned against him!] e. It was an experience [which, how desperately he wanted to forget!]
Sentences like (39) are consistent with the view that the bold-printed relative constituent is positioned on the edge of the highest projection in the clause (= RELP in the case of relative clauses), and the italicised exclamative constituent is positioned on the edge of a lower wh-operator projection/WHP housing the exclamative wh-operator (with a MODP constituent containing an underlined clausal modifier being able to be positioned between the two as in 39a, 39d).15 On the assumptions made here, the relative clause bracketed in (39a) will have the peripheral structure shown in highly simplified form below: (40)
[RELP where [FORCEP ø [MODP when we arrived [WHP what a nasty surprise [FINP there was in store for us]]]]]
The clause in (40) will be relative in type by virtue of containing the relativiser where on the edge of RELP, but exclamative in force by virtue of containing an exclamative FORCEP – so underlining the difference between type and force. Interestingly, sentences like those below suggest that relative clauses can also be imperative in force (or perhaps hortative in 41f, 41g): 15
Examples (39d, 39e) are marginally less good for me than (39a–39c), perhaps because relative who/which cross exclamative how often/how desperately, thereby leading to violation of the Intervention Constraint of Abels (2012: 247) specifying that ‘Likes cannot cross likes.’ There will be no such effect in (39a–39c) if the relative wh-constituents are in situ circumstantial adjuncts. Interestingly, in (42) a fronted discourse-linked argument (which) seems to be able to cross a fronted focused adjunct (at no point) without inducing much degradation.
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24 Background (41)
a. The top speed (which please don’t try to reach) is 220 miles an hour (Ferrari test driver, BBC Radio 5) b. You will please correct the false statement made last week in your next issue, after which please don’t handle my name at all (Robin Sterling 2013, Tales of Old Blount County, Alabama, Google Books, p. 278) c. You will start with completing their application form, which please be careful to triple check . . . (interviewarea.com) d. Next we went to see the beach, which please note is NOT A BEACH (tripadvisor.co.uk) e. Just a couple of comments, Peter. One regards the spelling of Kanté, on which see the attached screenshot (email from me to Peter Trudgill) f. He was at it again on last week’s Desert Island Discs, still complaining that the world – for which read the music press – does not appreciate his genius. (Observer, December 6, 2000: 23, col. 3; Haegeman 2012: 64, fn. 13.) g. There’s a little bit of a trend there, which let’s hope that continues (Listener, Talksport Radio) h. But there is, despite the book’s brevity, and the fact that it is enormously pleasurable to read (at which point let me salute the translation) much going on (Guardian, 12 April 2010: 13, col. 5; Haegeman 2012: 64, fn. 13)
If imperatives contain a null imperative operator (Han 1998, 2001; Haegeman & Greco 2017, 9: fn. 4) it is plausible to suppose that this operator occupies a position analogous to the spec-INTP position occupied by the operator in yesno questions. More generally, it may be (as suggested in Radford 2018) that English has an operator projection (OPP) whose specifier is the criterial position for interrogative, exclamative and imperative operators. By contrast, declarative relative clauses like that bracketed in (33d) above (repeated as 42a below) will contain no such operator and have a peripheral structure along the lines shown in simplified form in (42b): (42)
a. This is purely an admin charge by FedEx, [which at no point did I agree to paying] b. [RELP which [FORCEP ø [FOCP at no point [FINP did I agree to paying]]]]
The bracketed clause will be relative in type (by virtue of containing the relativiser which on the edge of RELP) and declarative in force (by virtue of containing the null declarative FORCE head ø). 1.4
Truncated Relative Clauses
The discussion in the previous section led to the conclusion that finite relative clauses are canonically RELP constituents which contain a FORCEP projection below RELP. However, in this section I will briefly examine the claim
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1.4 Truncated Relative Clauses
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made by Douglas (2016: ch. 3) that some relative clauses have a truncated/ reduced peripheral structure, with relativisers housed in different projections in different types of clause. Under one implementation suggested by Douglas, finite relatives are FORCEP constituents with the relativiser on the edge of FORCEP, ‘with that lexicalising Force and relative pronouns occupying SpecForceP’ (Douglas 2016: 111).16 By contrast, other types of relative have a reduced/truncated structure: more precisely, infinitival wh-relatives are FOCPs with the wh-relativiser on the edge of FOCP (Douglas 2016: 88); for-relatives and finite zero-relatives are FINP constituents which have a zero/ null relativiser on the edge of FINP; and infinitival zero-relatives ‘may be even smaller’ (2016: 104), and ‘may lack a C-domain altogether’ (2016: 81). Since I have argued above against treating wh- and that-relatives as FORCEP constituents (and in favour of treating them as RELPs), I shall confine my attention here to the claim made by Douglas that other types of relative have a truncated peripheral structure. In the spirit of Douglas’s truncation analysis, we might hypothesise that even within finite clauses, there may be variation in the size of the clause and the position occupied by the relativiser. In this connection, consider a relative clause like that bracketed below: (43)
On top of the repair, he lubed the wheels in the tracks and tightened the belt on my opener, [none of which did he charge me for] (m.yelp.com)
Here, none of which behaves like a negative phrase in triggering Auxiliary Inversion. If negative phrases which trigger Inversion are focused and move to the edge of FOCP (Rizzi 1997; Haegeman 2012), a plausible hypothesis is that the relativised constituent none of which is on the edge of FOCP and that the bracketed relative clause in (43) is truncated at FOCP. However, I am sceptical about the truncation analysis for a number of reasons. For one thing, the claim that relative operators move to spec-FOCP in infinitival wh-relatives is undermined by the observation that ‘wh-RCs do not obviously have a focus interpretation’ (Douglas 2016: 88, fn. 19, attributing the observation to Luigi Rizzi). Furthermore, any suggestion that none of which is positioned on the edge of FOCP in (43) poses the question of how the clause comes to be typed as relative; by contrast, a unitary account under which relative clauses always contain a RELP projection provides a much more straightforward account of clause typing. However, the claim that all relative 16
To simplify exposition, for the time being I shall set aside an alternative possibility suggested by Douglas, namely that wh- and that-relatives are TOPP rather than FORCEP constituents. I return to discuss the TOPP analysis in §2.7.
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26 Background clauses are RELPs poses the question of how none of which comes to trigger Auxiliary Inversion in (43). A tempting answer is that the relative clause in (43) contains both RELP and FOCP projections, with none of which moving first to the edge of FOCP (by virtue of none being focused) and from there to the edge of RELP (by virtue of which being a relative pronoun) – and indeed a similar analysis is advocated by Collins (2017: 6).17 However, such an analysis violates a constraint termed the Criterial Freezing Condition in Rizzi (2005, 2006a, 2010, 2014a, 2014b) and Rizzi and Shlonsky (2006, 2007) which, for present purposes, can be formulated as follows: (44)
Criterial Freezing Condition/CFC A constituent occupying its criterial position is frozen in place
The constraint violation arises because once the focused negative quantifier none moves to the edge of FOCP, it is thereby frozen in place by CFC, so preventing none of which from subsequently moving to the edge of RELP in the syntax.18 One possible way round this (pointed out by Liliane Haegeman, pers. comm.) is to suppose that none of which raises to the edge of FOCP in the syntax, and then which raises to the edge of RELP at LF (i.e. in the semantic component of the grammar that determines the LF/logical form of sentences): however, as she notes, the downsides of such an analysis are that it is abstract/empirically unverifiable, it commits us to additional theoretical apparatus (LF-movement), and it is little more than a technical artifice for circumventing CFC. An alternative way of ensuring that none of which ends up as the specifier of both a REL head and a FOC head is to suppose that REL and FOC are syncretised as a complex REL+FOC head, with none of which moving to become the specifier of this syncretic REL+FOC head: this would be in line 17
18
Collins claims the relevant phrase ‘moves to Spec FocP (triggering Negative Inversion), before moving to Spec ForceP’. His analysis thus differs slightly in assuming that the landing site for relative wh-constituents is the edge of FORCEP rather than (as I argue) the edge of RELP. By contrast, CFC would not prevent of which from moving to the edge of RELP, as in: (i) ??On top of the repair, he lubed the wheels in the tracks and tightened the belt on my opener, [of which none did he charge me for] However, fronting of which on its own here would violate other constraints, including the Constraint on Extraction Domains/CED (Cattell 1976, Cinque 1978 and Huang 1982), which permits extraction only out of complements. The CED violation would be incurred by extracting of which out of the negative QP none of which that serves as the specifier of FOCP. It may be that (i) also induces an intervention violation by moving one A-bar moved constituent across another.
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1.4 Truncated Relative Clauses
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with suggestions made by Rizzi (1997) that FORCE and FIN can be syncretised when immediately adjacent, and by Shlonsky (2010) and Haegeman and Dankaert (2017) that REL and FIN can be syncretised when immediately adjacent. However, there are two downsides to positing a syncretic REL+FOC head in (43). One is that if FOC is only found in clauses containing a FORCE head (Rizzi 1997), then REL and FOC will not be immediately adjacent, but rather will be separated by an intervening FORCE head (as in 42b above). The second is that a syncretic REL+FOC head will contain two interpretable features (a relative feature and a focus feature) and thus will potentially violate the One Feature One Head Principle (37). An alternative (to my mind, more plausible) way of maintaining a RELP analysis of relative clauses like that in (43) is to adapt the suggestion made by Haegeman (1996) that constituents transit through FINP on their way to other positions in the periphery. This would mean that the phrase none of which transits through the edge of FINP on its way to the edge of RELP. We could then suppose that, at the point when none of which moves to the edge of FINP, the negative feature carried by none attracts the auxiliary did to move to FIN. However, this raises the question of why none of which triggers Auxiliary Inversion in a relative clause like that bracketed in (43) above, but not in one like that parethesised below: (45)
Beckett only played in a total of 7 games (none of which he started), and was released from the Colorado Rockies on September 26, 1977 (en.wikipedia.org)
One possible answer is the following. Suppose that (adapting the analysis in Radford 2016: 307), FIN in an embedded clause carries a T-feature (enabling FIN to attract an auxiliary to move from T to FIN) when it (has an edge feature which) attracts a negative constituent to move to the edge of FINP, but not when it attracts an interrogative constituent. Given these assumptions, if FIN attracts none of which to move to spec-FINP qua (i.e. in its capacity as a) negative constituent, it will trigger concomitant Auxiliary Inversion: but if FIN attracts none of which to move to the edge of FINP qua interrogative constituent, there will be no Inversion; in either case, none of which will subsequently move from the edge of FINP to the edge of RELP, thus allowing us to maintain the unitary hypothesis that the criterial position for relativisers is always the edge of RELP.19 19
Interestingly, Auxiliary Inversion is also optional in exclamatives such as: (i) How rarely (do) students heed the advice you give them! A solution parallel to that suggested for (43, 45) can be envisaged here.
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28 Background But what of the claim made by Douglas (2016) that finite zero-relatives are FINP constituents in which the relativiser is on the edge of FINP? This hypothesis is empirically undermined by the internet-sourced example in (46a) below, and by the constructed examples in (46b–46e): (46)
a. I am growing chillies this year which is something [never have I grown before] . . . (luxury columnist.com) b. A Jag is something [ordinary people like us, we’ll never be able to afford] c. A mobile phone is something [how can you possibly live without?] d. These are words [how often people utter without thinking!] e. I’m going to say something [please don’t be offended by!] f. This is something [let’s try and put behind us]
The bracketed finite zero-relative contains a peripheral focused negative in (46a) above, and a peripheral dislocated topic in (46b): if (as claimed by Rizzi 1997) focused and topicalised peripheral constituents only occur in clauses containing FORCEP, it follows that the bracketed relative clauses in (46a, 46b) cannot be truncated clauses which lack FORCEP. Likewise, the fact that finite zerorelatives can be interrogative in force as in (46c), exclamative as in (46d), imperative as in (46e), or hortative as in (46f) suggests that they must be complete clauses which contain a FORCEP projection. Under the analysis proposed here, all finite relative clauses in English are RELP constituents containing FORCEP: they are typed as relative via the relativiser on the edge of RELP, and are interpreted as having the force of a statement, question, exclamation (etc.) depending on the nature of the FORCEP projection beneath RELP. Although (for reasons noted at the beginning of this chapter) I will have little to say about non-finite relatives in this book, let me briefly examine the claim made by Douglas that for-relatives are truncated FINP constituents with a zero/ null relativiser on the edge of FINP. An interesting question posed by this analysis is how to deal with relative clauses like those bracketed below, which contain a wh-PP in front of for:20
20
Wh+for structures appear to be restricted to occurring in relative clauses in standard varieties of English, since interrogatives like *I wasn’t sure which hotel for him to stay in are ungrammatical. It would appear, however, that wh+for interrogatives are found in Belfast English, as illustrated below: (i) They wanted to do something, but they weren’t sure what for to do (Alison Henry, cited as a pers. comm. in Baltin 2010: 332) As for wh+for exclamatives like: (ii) What a shame for Steven Gerrard to miss the start of the season (John Cross, Talksport Radio)
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a. As Liverpool chase the game, there may be more room [in which for Manchester United to manoeuvre] (Commentator, Sky Sports TV) b. The physical habitat of the animal plays an important role in their welfare, meeting their physical requirements and providing a positive environment [in which for them to live] (blackpoolzoo.org.uk) c. For a beginner, the course will likely provide a good atmosphere [in which for you to fire your first shots] (hunting.about.com; Douglas 2016: 62) d. So whether you have a Chameleon, Tree Python or an Emerald Tree Boa, we are sure to have the right equipment for you to replicate the perfect environment [in which for them to thrive] (reptiles.swelluk.com) e. Or do you create bigger headaches, more friction and one more thing [about which for them to worry]? (huffingtonpost.com) f. There should be six days [on which for men to work] and a day [on which for men to rest] (inscription on a tombstone in New Zealand, reported by Jim McCloskey, pers. comm.) g. The concept was to find musicians and porches [on which for them to play] (Porchfest, Wikipedia.org) h. But we also have a better basis [from which for them to get started] (cleverism.com) i. They took with them items that I had left there [with which for them to maintain the property] (propertyinvestmentproject.co.uk) j. For me . . . supporting individuals is the most meaningful way to create the best possible experience for patients and a place for them [from which for them to enjoy the best health possible] (jessicabean.com.au)
If (as Douglas claims) for-relatives are truncated FINP structures, then a relative clause like that bracketed in (47a) above can seemingly be taken to have the structure bracketed below, with for being the head of FINP and in which being its specifier:21 the infinitive clause can be argued to be the wh-counterpart of the sentence in (iii) below: (iii) It is such a shame for Steven Gerrard to miss the start of the season
21
This is suggested by the observation that it is can occur between what a shame and for in (ii), and furthermore both (ii) and (iii) can be tagged by isn’t it? Since exclamative clauses are factive (Grimshaw 1979; Abels 2010) and factive clauses are finite, we would not expect to find infinitival exclamatives (other than those in which the infinitive is a relative clause). On infinitival wh-exclamatives in English, see Radford (1980) and (2016: 447–50). I have assumed here that for-infinitives lack force in standard varieties of English, and hence that there is no FORCEP projection between RELP and FINP: this is consistent with for not being used in clauses with interrogative force in standard varieties of English (as noted in fn. 20). However, in varieties like Belfast English where we find interrogative for-infinitives such as those below (from Henry 1995: 88): (i) I don’t know [where for to go] (ii) He wasn’t sure [what for to do] it seems plausible to take the bracketed clauses to contain an interrogative FORCEP projection.
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30 Background (48)
As Liverpool chase the game, there may be more room [FINP in which [T for] [TP Manchester United [T to] manoeuvre]]
However, such a structure would be potentially problematic in several respects. For one thing, it requires us to suppose that spec-FINP can be a criterial position for a wh-relativiser, in spite of the fact that spec-FINP is generally regarded as a transit position (i.e. a position which constituents pass through on the way elsewhere), not a criterial position (i.e. a position which constituents remain in). Moreover, the analysis in (40) would violate the Doubly Filled COMP Filter (Chomsky & Lasnik 1977; Chomsky 1981; Koopman 2000; Koopman & Szabolsci 2000; Collins 2007), which for present purposes can be given the formulation below: (49)
Doubly Filled COMP Filter/DFCF No projection headed by an overt complementiser can have an overt specifier at PF
The DFCF violation arises in (48) because FINP is headed by the overt complementiser for and has an overt specifier in which. In addition, an analysis like (48) fails to account for the possibility of modifiers (like those underlined below) intervening between in which and for: (50)
a. ?I found a thrift-shop [in which next year for you to do the Christmas shopping] (Douglas 2016: 68) b. There may be more room [in which perhaps for Manchester United to manoeuvre] c. We need weapons [with which, if necessary, for us to defend ourselves] d. This will provide a better basis [from which eventually for them to get started] e. They will be provided with the means [with which, if the need arise, for them to repair any damage to the infrastructure] f. This is the perfect environment [in which, if they are watered regularly, for petunias to thrive]
Considerations such as those outlined above suggest that the wh-relativiser and complementiser are housed in different projections. A plausible suggestion to make along these lines is that the relativiser in a sentence like (47a) is on the edge of RELP, and the complementiser for is on the edge of FINP – as shown below: (51)
As Liverpool chase the game, there may be more room [RELP in which [FINP for [TP Manchester United to manoeuvre]]]
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1.4 Truncated Relative Clauses
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Such a structure would be compatible both with the key claim made here that whrelativisers are always housed in a RELP projection, and with Douglas’s intuition that infinitival relatives have a truncated structure. This is because, under the analysis in (51), infinitival relatives have a peripheral structure which is truncated below RELP, with the result that they are RELP+FINP structures. A RELP+FINP analysis like (51) would overcome the three objections raised to the FINP analysis in (48). Firstly, there would be no DFCF violation because in which and for are contained in separate projections in (51), namely RELP and FINP respectively.22 Secondly, spec-FINP would not be treated as a criterial position, since the criterial position for in which is spec-RELP in (51). And thirdly, we could account for modifiers being positioned between the two in sentences like (50) if we were to adopt the suggestion made in Rizzi (2014a) of allowing FINP recursion structures of the form FINP+MODP+FINP. This would allow us to treat sentences like (50) as involving RELP constituents which contain a FINP+MODP+FINP structure, so that the relative clause bracketed in (50f) above has the structure shown below:23 (52)
This is the perfect environment [RELP in which [FINP ø [MODP if they are watered regularly [FINP for [TP petunias to thrive]]]]]
Such an analysis would allow us to maintain the unitary account proposed here under which all relatives clauses contain a RELP projection, while at the same time being compatible with Douglas’s claims that for-relatives have a truncated FINP structure – albeit a structure which (in terms of the analysis proposed in 51, 52) is truncated below the level of RELP.24 To sum up the discussion in this section: I have argued that all relative clauses contain a RELP projection housing an (overt or null) relativiser, generally followed by a FORCEP constituent marking the (e.g. declarative, 22
23
24
People who dislike structures such as (51) may do so because they have a constraint in their grammar requiring complementisers to be clause-initial: see Radford (2018: ch. 3) for discussion. Alternatively, if we suppose that MODP can generally be positioned between any two other peripheral projections, it could be that in place of (52) we have the simpler structure below: (i) This is the perfect environment [RELP in which [MODP if they are watered regularly [FINP for [TP petunias to thrive]]]] Note that a truncated RELP+FINP analysis of infinitival relatives would correctly predict that infinitival relatives (perhaps by virtue of lacking FORCEP) cannot contain peripheral constituents other than in situ adjuncts, e.g. they cannot contain a fronted argument like that italicised below: (i) *This is a perfect place [in which petunias (for you) to grow] For discussion of the more general issue of whether all for-infinitives have a truncated structure, see §2.5 of Radford (2018).
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32 Background interrogative, exclamative etc.) force of the clause. However, I conceded that it may be the case that certain non-finite relatives may have a peripheral structure which is truncated below the level of RELP, and may have a periphery comprising only RELP+FINP projections. 1.5
Relativisers
English has a range of relativisers used to introduce relative clauses, including those italicised below (where ø denotes a zero/null item): (53)
a. b. c. d. e.
He is someone [who everyone seems to like] Corruption is something [which we need to address] Paris is the place [where we first met] The 1970s was a time [when bell-bottoms were in fashion] This is the best film [that/ø I have ever seen]
As these examples illustrate, relativisers fall into two distinct morphological types, namely (i) wh-relativisers like who/which/where/when, and (ii) non-wh relativisers like that/ø. There have been a number of studies on the frequency of use of different types of relativiser in contemporary English, with Biber et al. (1999: 612) concluding that ‘that and zero have a more colloquial flavor and are preferred in conversation’ whereas wh-words are ‘considered more literate and appropriate to careful language.’25 However, in this section my focus will be on the syntactic status of relativisers in English (rather than their frequency), and I will begin by looking at the nature of who. The relativiser who is traditionally classified as a pronoun, and indeed it exhibits a number of properties typical of pronouns. For example, just as the pronoun he has three distinct case forms (nominative he, accusative him and genitive his), so too relative who has three distinct case forms in formal styles of English (nominative who, accusative whom and genitive whose).26 25
26
In a similar vein, Guy and Bayley (1995: 155) observe that ‘wh- forms are favoured in formal writing and for human antecedents in embedded-clause position. Choice of that is favoured in informal speech and for non-human antecedents. Zero is moderately favoured for human antecedents, especially in embedded-clause direct-object position, and in informal speech.’ Other studies on the frequency of use of specific relativisers in different varieties of English and the factors governing their use include Quirk (1957), Sigley (1997), Tottie (1997a, 1997b), Tagliamonte (2002), Herrmann (2003), Hoffmann (2011), and Suárez-Gómez (2014). However, relative whom/whose have largely fallen out of use in contemporary colloquial English: see Aarts (1993), Tottie (1997a), Tagliamonte (2002), Britain (2008), and Cheshire, Adger & Fox (2013). For example, Šímová (2005: 71, fn. 29) reports that in a corpus of direct speech extracted from contemporary fiction, ‘Not a single example of whom or whose was attested’. Moreover, she notes (2005: 82) that who is only used to relativise subjects, with non-
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1.5 Relativisers
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Moreover, like he, the pronoun who has inherent gender/animacy properties and requires antecedents denoting people (cf. someone/*something who was nice). In addition, like a typical pronoun, who can be used as the object of an immediately preceding/pied-piped preposition, so that just as we can say For him, she would do anything, so too we can say (in more formal styles) He is someone for whom she would do anything. Thus, the case, gender and distributional properties of who suggest that it is a pronoun. Now consider the status of the relativiser which. In traditional grammars, it is treated as a relative pronoun, and there is compelling evidence in support of such an analysis. For one thing, it has the distributional properties of a pronoun in that like the demonstrative pronoun this, it can serve as the complement of an immediately preceding/pied-piped preposition: just as we say ‘On this, you can rely’, so too we can say (in more formal styles) ‘This is something on which you can rely’. Moreover, relative which (like the pronoun it) has gender/animacy properties requiring it to have antecedents denoting things (something/*someone which is nice).27 It also has the case subjects being relativised mainly by use of a zero relativiser. Sobin (1997) and Lasnik & Sobin (2000) claim that whom is an artificial/hypercorrect form which is the result of a grammatical virus worming its way into the language through prescriptive education in schools. It would seem that this can lead to unusual outcomes, including the use of whom to relativise a longdistance subject in intransitive contexts, as in the relative clauses bracketed below: (i)
(ii) (iii) (iv) (v)
27
Can I just say that Noreen Burrows, [whom I am sure ― is well known to you as a professor at Glasgow University], talks about this problem, and she . . . (Lord Harrison, publications.parliament.uk) I was astonished to hear the Minister, [whom I am sure ― is a patriotic Scot], refer to her part of the United Kingdom so disparagingly (Quentin Davies, parliament.uk) It’s just a shame that this lady, [whom I am sure ― is very nice], is not big in the way of diplomacy (tripadvisor.com) There is another angel in heaven [whom I am sure ― is being welcomed warmly by George and her folks] (ryanfuneralservice.com) How can I work with someone like that [whom I am sure ― is not a people person]? (leaderonomics.com)
For alternative perspectives on the nature of whom, see Emonds (1986), Walsh & Walsh (1989), Bennet (1994), Breul (2000), Boyland (2001), Pullum (2004), Liberman (2005), Zwicky (2007), Doyle (2009), Schepps (2010), and Hoffmann (2011: 40–7, 148–9). However, this is an oversimplification in certain respects. For example, Reid (1997: 46) notes that some speakers use which with ‘words denoting a baby’, illustrating this with the contrast below: (i)
The man who/*which is holding the baby who/?which is wearing a pink dress is my husband
Moreover, relative which can also be used in relation to people in sentences such as: (ii) But it was for Bodie for which he will best be remembered (News reporter, ITV)
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34 Background properties of a pronoun, in that (like the pronoun you) it has a syncretic nominative/accusative form which, and has the genitive form whose (as in (iii) Remember that they have a house-keeper, which we don’t have (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 1049) In (ii), Bodie denotes the role of a secret service agent named Bodie (played by actor Lewis Collins in the TV series The Professionals), so Bodie could be taken to be an elliptical form of ‘THE ROLE OF Bodie’; if so, which could be then to refer back to the NP headed by the inanimate light noun ROLE. If we adopt a similar approach to (iii), we might suggest that a housekeeper is an elliptical form of ‘a housekeeper POSITION’, and that which is used because the head of the relevant NP is the abstract inanimate light noun POSITION. Alternatively, there may be parallels between (iii) above and the use of the (supposedly inanimate) pronoun that with a predicate nominal antecedent in sentences such as: (iv)
I may be a housekeeper, but I don’t like people to call me that
My data also contain the following examples of which used with a human antecedent: (v)
I think I’ve probably got a couple of people in front of me which I might be quicker than (Lewis Hamilton, BBC1 TV) (vi) Spurs have got four strikers from which to choose from (Mark Lawrenson, BBC Radio 5) (vii) It’s the four outfield players that count, of which Joe Cole has got to be one of them (Listener, BBC Radio 5) (viii) Mark Hughes has signed eight players, of which four of them were in action today (Alan Shearer, BBC1 TV) (ix) Dorset Police arrested two people, both of which have now been released (Reporter, Talksport Radio) It is interesting that in each of these cases, there is a numeral (or in the case of both, a dual quantifier) used to quantify the antecedent or relative pronoun, suggesting that which is used to denote members of a ‘limited set’ (Herrmann 2003: 113–14), so it may be that which here is an elliptical form of ‘which SET OF PEOPLE’, and that which modifies the inanimate light noun SET. I note in passing that a corpus of resumptive relative structures collected by Tony Kroch at the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1980s shows the following examples of which being used with a human antecedent: (x) (xi)
My son, god bless him, he aaa married this girl which I like her (E. Walesky) There were these two little boys which they were just younger than I was, but they were my friend’s brothers (Susan Michini)
And Shorrocks (1982: 339) similarly reports which being used in the dialect of Farnworth (near Manchester, UK) not only with inanimate antecedents but also with human antecedents, as below: (xii)
My dad, which were (= who was) a fireman then . . .
This kind of use of which as a relative pronoun with a human antecedent seems to be varietyspecific (It is not possible in my variety, for example) and may have come about as an analogical extension of the use of interrogative which to modify (or refer back to) nominals denoting humans, in sentences such as: (xiii) Of these two players, which do you admire most? (xiv) Which player of the two do you admire most?
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1.5 Relativisers
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‘This is the album whose cover caused a scandal’), sharing this genitive form with who.28 Now consider the status of the relativisers where/when. Although these are traditionally categorised as relative adverbs (e.g. by Biber et al. 1999: 608), a good case can be made for treating them as relative pronouns. For example, like pronouns, they can only be used with a specific type of antecedent, so that when requires an antecedent denoting time (cf. the time/*place when we met), and where requires an antecedent denoting place (cf. the place/*time where we met). Moreover, both can serve as the complement of an immediately preceding/pied-piped preposition, as in the examples below: (54)
a. The furniture isn’t the only thing inspired by the place from where it came (brittontimbers.com.au) b. 1968 was the year in which the number of cremations exceeded disposal by burial for the first time, since when the proportion has increased and now approaches 70% of all funerals (salford.gov.uk)
Thus, relativisers such as where/when can be treated as adverbial pronouns. And in much the same way as adverbial nouns (like home in ‘I’m staying home today’) have been argued to function as the complements of abstract prepositions (so that home has the more abstract structure AT HOME), so too adverbial pronouns can be taken to be complements of silent prepositions, so that where can spell out a more abstract structure like IN WHERE, and when can likewise spell out AT WHEN.29 Although I have classified wh-relativisers like who/which/where/when as relative pronouns in the discussion above, it should be noted that (in keeping with analyses which treat personal pronouns like he as D/determiner constituents),30 relative pronouns could alternatively be taken to be determiners modifying silent nouns. On this view, which is the spellout of a string which could be represented more abstractly as WHICH THING, who is the spellout of WHICH PERSON, when is the spellout of AT WHICH TIME, and where is the spellout of AT/IN/TO WHICH PLACE. This type of analysis could be extended to other relative adverbs like those italicised below – albeit the use of how in (55b) is non-standard: 28
29
30
Reid (1997: 46) treats whose as ‘the genitive form of who and which’. As noted in fn. 26, use of whose in relatives in colloquial English is moribund. On the ‘silent preposition’ analysis of adverbial nouns and pronouns, see Ross (1967: 215, 387), Emonds (1970: 63–4, 182–3; 1976, 1987), McCawley (1988), Collins (2007), Caponigro & Pearl (2008, 2009) and Radford (2016: 231–3). On the idea that personal pronouns in English belong to the category D, see Postal (1966, 1970), Abney (1987), Longobardi (1994), Koopman (1999), and Lyons (1999).
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36 Background (55)
a. This is the reason [why he didn’t tell his parents] b. That’s the way [how I reacted] (Jack Tweed, BBC Radio 5)
On one view, why in (55a) spells out a more abstract structure like FOR WHICH REASON, and how in (55b) spells out IN WHICH WAY. Now consider the status of the relativiser that. Although there is a longstanding debate in the research literature as to whether that is a relative pronoun or a complementiser,31 there are a variety of reasons for taking it to be a complementiser. For one thing, it is homophonous with its complementclause-introducing complementiser counterpart (e.g. in ‘I said that I was tired’), and is similarly restricted to use in finite clauses and so does not occur in infinitival relatives.32 Moreover, like the complementiser that, it is morphologically inert and does not inflect for case (e.g. it has no genitive form that’s in standard varieties of English).33 Furthermore, that appears not to carry inherent gender/noun class features, and so allows an unrestricted choice of antecedent – e.g. an expression denoting a person, thing or place (as in ‘There’s someone/something/somewhere that I’d like to talk to you about’). In addition, 31
32
Analyses of relative that as a complementiser date back in effect to the treatment of that as a conjunction by Jespersen (1924: 85; 1927: 165–8) and Kruisinga (1924). For more recent analyses of it as a complementiser, see Huddleston (1984, 1988), Lass (1987), Radford (1988), Haegeman (1994), Kayne (1994), Bianchi (1999), de Vries (2002), Bhatt (2002), Douglas (2016). For an alternative analysis of that as a relative pronoun see Poutsma (1914: 824), Seppänen (1997), Arsenijević (2009), Kayne (2014), and Manzini (2014). Seppänen (1997: 122) disputes this, citing the following structure from Dickens: (i)
33
. . . lips [that to look at is to long to kiss] . . .
However, the complementiser that here can be argued to be positioned on the periphery of the finite is-clause, not of the infinitival to-clause. However, as reported by Seppänen (1997) and Seppänen and Kjellmer (1995), there are varieties of English which use that’s as a genitive in relative clauses, suggesting that it functions as a relative pronoun in such varieties. Seppänen (1997: 121–2) reports that’s occurring as a genitive in regional varieties of English as illustrated in (i–iii) below, but claims that this use has spread to both spoken colloquial English as in (iv), and written colloquial English as in (v): (i) (ii) (iii) (iv)
the woman that’s sister married the postie (Scottish, Grant 1934–76) Remember the man that’s house got burnt down? (Irish, Harris 1993: 150) That’s the chap that’s uncle was drowned (English, Orton & Dieth, 1962–8) They put new hair on the doll thats hair had fallen out . . . (Cobuild Corpus, British, spoken, 1990) (v) It delivers a VHS picture the like of which the world has never seen. A picture that’s quality of detail, colour and resolution is unrivalled (The Observer, 1988) However, that’s is not found in my own variety. Moreover, as Seppänen notes, it differs from the genitive pronoun whose in being incompatible with pied-piping in sentences such as: (vi) Here is the guy about whose/*that’s brother Mary was talking
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1.5 Relativisers
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just as the complementiser that cannot serve as the complement of an immediately preceding preposition in a sentence like (56a) below, so too relative that is similarly restricted as we see from (56b): (56)
a. I’m not sure (*about) [that he is innocent] b. That is the hotel [that they are staying in/*in that they are staying]
In this respect, relative that patterns like the complementiser that and unlike the relative pronoun which (cf. ‘This is the hotel in which they are staying’). Furthermore, the idea of taking that to be a relative complementiser gains typological plausibility from the observation that there are languages which have a dedicated relative complementiser used only in relative clauses (e.g. ki in Slovene, co in Czech and Polish: Hladnik 2015: 24). A final property of relative that which provides a clinching argument in support of its status as a complementiser comes from the observation that some speakers who allow doubly-filled COMP structures also allow that to be used after a (phrase containing a) relative pronoun, in structures such as the following: (57)
a. I’m aware of the speed [with which that they work] (Tim Vickery, BBC Radio 5) b. The manner [in which that Reina has been dispatched] just isn’t the right way to do business (Nat Coombs, Talksport Radio) c. The reason [why that there is a buzz in here] is because Mark Webber is in pole position (Jake Humphreys, BBC1 TV) d. Gross analysed a case [about which that he had already lectured on the 23rd November 1942 at the Wiener Biologische Gesellschaft] (P. Weindling, 2013, ‘From scientific object to commemorated victim’, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences vol. 35)
Since structures involving a wh-constituent followed by the complementiser that are also attested in exclamative and interrogative clauses in English (as documented extensively in Radford 2018), it is much more likely that the item that in such cases is a complementiser, because English does not allow clauses containing two peripheral relative (or interrogative or exclamative) pronouns. Further support for taking that to be a complementiser in such structures comes from structures like (47) above, in which a (phrase containing a) relative pronoun is followed by the complementiser for, as in (47a) ‘As Liverpool chase the game, there may be more room in which for Manchester United to manoeuvre.’34 34
A potential problem for the analysis proposed here is posed by that+wh relatives like those bracketed below: (i)
You need to buy a world class striker [that who you can put in up front] (Mark Saggers, Talksport Radio; Radford 2018: 119)
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38 Background In wh+that relatives such as those in (57), it seems plausible to take that to be a relative complementiser occupying the head REL position of RELP, and the (phrase containing the) relative wh-pronoun to serve as its specifier. Generalising, we might then suppose that wh-relativisers are canonically positioned in specRELP, and relative complementisers in REL. Analysing that as a relative complementiser rather than a declarative FORCE head accounts for that being able to occur in relatives which are not declarative in force but rather have the force of a wh-question (as in 58a below), or a yes-no question (as in 58b), or an exclamation (as in 58c), or an imperative (as in 58d), or a hortative (as in 58e): (58)
a. Klinsmann is someone [that how can you argue with what he did as a footballer?] (Sean Wheelock, BBC Radio 5) b. there’s a man [that is he gonna get his first ever podium?] (Motor cycling commentator, BBC2 TV; capitals mark contrastive stress on locative there) c. They need to be solid at the back against a Spanish team [that what a goal they scored!] (Ray Parlour, Talksport Radio) d. I’m going to say something [that please don’t take the wrong way!] e. Those that see the valley as a potential source for ‘an oval’ or something [that ‘let’s not call an oval’] do not have a vision that sits with the community agreed principles and values (aireys.inlet.org)
On this view, relative that is a complementiser which occupies the head REL position of a RELP constituent positioned above a FORCEP which is generally declarative in force (as in the clauses bracketed in 57 above), but which can have a different force in relative clauses like those bracketed in (58) above.35 (ii) As President, he bore principal responsibility for safeguarding the institution and establishing the ethical standard [that to which staff would be expected to adhere to] (Committee report, cited in Liberman 2007d) Following a suggestion made by Memo Cinque (pers. comm.), Radford (2018: 119–20) discusses the possibility of treating that here as a SUB(ordinator) constituent positioned above the RELP housing who/to which, so that the relative clause in (i) would have the structure below: (iii) . . . a world class striker [SUBP [SUB that] [RELP who [REL ø] you can put up front]]
35
See Bhatt and Yoon (1992), Rizzi (1997: 328, fn. 6), Bennis (2000), Roussou (2000), Haegeman (2006a, 2012), Danckaert (2011, 2012), and Radford (2018: §3.8) on the postulation of a SUB head. However, only six examples of that+wh relatives occur in my data, and this suggests they are sporadic production errors. For example, (i) could be an instance of self-correction in which the speaker starts out producing a that-relative and then switches to what he perceives to be a more prestigious wh-relative. Likewise, (ii) may be an editing error in which the author had originally written that . . . to and decided to replace that by the more formal to which but forgot to delete that and to. The claim that relative that occupies the head of RELP (and thus precedes all non-relative constituents) might at first sight seem to be called into question by relative clauses like that bracketed below:
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1.5 Relativisers
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A further type of relativiser found in some (non-standard) varieties is what. My broadcast English data contain the following examples: (59)
a. We’re lacking in tempo and technique – everything [what you talk about] (Chris Waddle, BBC Radio 5) b. What do they do [what we don’t do]? (Chris Waddle, BBC Radio 5) c. Not all [what they do] should end up in the papers (Darren Gough, Talksport Radio) d. The people [what do sell the stories] end up being celebrities themselves (Darren Gough, Talksport Radio) e. Everything [what we are trying to do] is the right thing (Scott Parker, BBC Radio 5) f. I don’t like the way [what he’s done things] (Mark Halsey, Talksport Radio) g. These are the games [what we all want to play in] (Daniel Sturridge, Talksport Radio)
Relative what has a dialectal feel to me, albeit the speakers using it in (59) come from a wide variety of geographical areas (Chris Waddle from Felling, Durham; Darren Gough from Barnsley, South Yorkshire; Scott Parker from Lambeth, London; Mark Halsey from Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire; and Daniel Sturridge from Birmingham, West Midlands). Berizzi (2010) and Berizzi and Rossi (2010) argue that what is a complementiser in this relative use: support for their claim comes from the observation that (like that) relative what allows a potentially unrestricted choice of antecedents (e.g. both human and inanimate), it does not inflect for case (e.g. it has no genitive form what’s), and it cannot occur as the complement of an immediately preceding/pied-piped preposition. Relative what would seem to be a variant of the complementiser that, which (in relevant varieties) is spelled out as what when wh-marked. In relative clauses (let us suppose) it occupies the head REL position of RELP and is wh-marked by virtue (i)
He’ll be disappointed at the way [in which, having got his team back in it, that he was part of the goal they conceded to lose the match] (Martin Keown, Talksport Radio)
Here, the periphery of the bracketed relative clause contains an (italicised) relative PP followed by an (underlined) clausal modifier which in turn is followed by the (bold-printed) complementiser that. Clearly, we cannot take that to be in REL here, since if this were the case it would immediately follow its specifier in which in spec-RELP, and yet this is not the case here. Instead, that must spell out a lower peripheral head. In Radford (2018, ch. 3) I argue that some speakers allow that to be used to spell out a head lower down in the clause periphery which has a specifier of its own. On this view, if the underlined adjunct clause is in spec-MODP, that could occupy the head MOD position of MODP. Alternatively, that in sentences like (i) could be taken to be a finiteness marker which spells out the FIN head below MODP – an analysis which would appear more consistent with the observation that there is an intonation break between the adjunct clause and that, perhaps suggesting they are contained in separate projections.
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40 Background of having (or attracting) an abstract relative wh-constituent as its specifier. In some non-standard varieties (including that spoken in the East End of London) the complement-clause-introducing complementiser that can also be wh-marked (and be spelled out as what) via agreement with an extracted local subject, so giving rise to structures like that below: (60)
Who d’you reckon [what ― done it]? ‘Who do you think did it?’
I will have no more to say about relative what here because only a handful of examples occur in my data, and it plays no role in the structures discussed in chapters 2–4.36 Generalising at this point, I shall take relative clauses to be RELP constituents headed by an overt or null complementiser, and suppose that this complementiser has as its specifier (a constituent containing) an overt or null relativiser which serves to link the relative clause to its antecedent. On this view, a relative clause like (61a) below will be a RELP constituent whose edge has the structure shown in (61b), with RELP headed by a null complementiser ø, and containing the wh-relativiser which as its specifier: (61)
a. This is something [which we can’t do without] b. [RELP which [REL ø] we can’t do without]
On the other hand, the relative clause bracketed in (62a) below will be a RELP headed by the overt complementiser that and containing a null wh-relativiser (below denoted as WH) as its specifier: (62)
a. This is something [that we can’t do without] b. [RELP WH [REL that] we can’t do without]
And a zero-relative clause like that bracketed in (63a) below will be a RELP with a null head, and a null wh-relativiser as its specifier – as in (63b): 36
Interestingly, McKee et al. (1998) report young children producing what-relatives like the following: (i) the one what they’re dancing on (ii) Pick those two up what the dinosaur is eating them It would appear that there are adult speakers who treat what as a relative pronoun with the genitive form what’s in sentences such as the following: (iii) That’s the girl what’s mum loves horror films (Cheshire 1993: 92, item 118) A further item which appears to function as a relative complementiser in some dialects is as (see e.g. Forby 1830, Wright 1905, Ihalainen 1980, Shorrocks 1982, Kekäläinen 1985): however, I will not discuss it here as it did not occur as a relativiser in my broadcast English data.
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1.5 Relativisers (63)
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a. This is something [we can’t do without] b. [RELP WH [REL ø] we can’t do without]
If we suppose that both the head and specifier of RELP can be either overt or null, this will lead us to expect to find not only the three structures in (61b, 62b, 63b) above, but also a fourth type of structure in which both head and specifier are overt. And yet, relative clause structures like those bracketed below are ungrammatical: (64)
a. *This is something [which that we can’t do without] b. [RELP which [REL that] we can’t do without]
Why should this be? A plausible answer is that a structure like (64b) violates the Doubly Filled COMP Filter/DFCF in (49) above, which stipulates that ‘No projection headed by an overt complementiser can have an overt specifier at PF’. The DFCF violation arises because the complementiser that occupies the head REL position of RELP and has an overt specifier (which). However, the DFCF account is essentially stipulative and non-explanatory. Accordingly, let’s consider an alternative parsing approach based on the claim made by Staum Casasanto and Sag (2008a) that the complementiser that serves the parsing function of signalling the onset of an upcoming embedded finite clause. This in effect requires that to be the first overt word in its clause, and clearly this condition is violated in a wh+that clause like (64b), while being satisfied in a structure like (62b). The minority of speakers who accept wh+that relatives like those in (64) appear not to require that to be clause-initial.37 However, the situation may be somewhat more complex than this. The reason is that while my broadcast English data contain no examples of relative clause structures like (64) above in which a wh-word like who/which is followed by that, they do contain examples of structures like (65) below in which an italicised relative wh-phrase is immediately followed by that, in spite of the relevant structure violating the Doubly Filled COMP Filter (49): (65)
I’m aware of the speed [with which that they work] (=48a)
Interestingly, it would seem that even the minority of speakers who allow whphrase+that relatives like (65) generally do not allow wh-word+that relatives like (64b). Why should this be?
37
See Radford (2018, ch. 3) for detailed discussion of parametric variation in the use of that in colloquial English.
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42 Background In principle, the absence of relatives like (64) in which a wh-pronoun like which/who is followed by that might simply be an accidental gap in my data which is an artefact of the relatively small sample I have of wh+that relatives. Still, it should be noted that Zwicky (2002) reported a parallel contrast in interrogative wh+that clauses like those bracketed below: (66)
a. I’m not sure [what kind of arrangement that he has in mind] b. *I’m not sure [what that he has in mind]
And the data on wh+that interrogatives reported in Radford (2018) bear out his claim. A similar contrast is found in Alemannic and Bavarian (Bayer & Brandner 2008) and in Lucernese and Swiss German (Schönenberger 2010). One possible account of the contrast would be to suppose that wh-words occupy a different position from wh-phrases. In this connection, it should be noted that Josef Bayer has argued that (for economy reasons38) wh-words move to C, whereas wh-phrases move to spec-CP (see Bayer & Brandner 2008, and Bayer 2014, 2015, 2016); this claim is supported by empirical evidence from Bavarian that (like complementisers) fronted wh-words inflect for subject agreement and can host clitics. In a similar vein, Kathol (2001) argues that relative pronouns occupy the head C position of CP in German; and the same may be true of wh-words in North Norwegian dialects in which movement of a verb into C is possible only when C attracts a wh-phrase, not when it attracts a wh-word (see Taraldsen 1978, Vangsnes 2005, Westergaard 2003, 2005, Westergaard & Vangsnes 2005). Such an analysis (if applied to English relative clauses) would mean that a wh-word like which in a sentence like (61a) above (repeated as 67a below) would have a structure along the lines shown in (67b), with which occupying the head rather than the specifier position of RELP: 38
A key assumption of the economy claim is that a structure like (i) below where who moves to C is more economical than one like (ii) where who moves to spec-CP: (i) I wonder [CP [C who] she is meeting] (ii) I wonder [CP who [C' [C ø] she is meeting]] The reason is that (ii) creates an additional (intermediate, C') projection which is not present in (i). However, the economy claim is not entirely straightforward. This is because if who in (i) adjoins to a null complementiser, we will have the structure in (iii) below: (iii) I wonder [CP [C who+[C ø]] she is meeting] And the derivation in (iii) will create additional branching structure in C (unless movement of who to C can be treated as a case of remerger in the sense of Donati & Cecchetto 2011) – leaving us with the question of what the basis is for claiming that (iii) really is more economical than (ii). Bayer suggests that the relevant economy condition amounts to an ‘Avoid specifier’ principle which avoids the projection of a specifier wherever possible.
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43
a. This is something [which we can’t do without] b. [RELP [REL which] we can’t do without]
In structures like (67b) where the head REL position of RELP is occupied by which, it follows that REL cannot also be occupied by that, since which and that are (non-affixal, non-clitic) free forms and hence independent words which cannot both occupy the same head position. Thus, an analysis along the lines of (67b) accounts for why we don’t find wh-word+that relatives.39 At first sight, the claim that wh-words occupy the head REL position of RELP and thus exclude the presence of a complementiser might seem to be undermined by structures like the following: (68)
a. The reason [why that there is a buzz in here] is because Mark Webber is in pole position (=57c) b. The reason [why that women is wiser than men] (Title of song recorded in 1941 by Bill Jackson) c. The reason [why that Enderdroid ships herself with Fandroid/Micri] (aminoapps.com)
After all, if why is a wh-word occupying the head REL position of RELP, it would be expected to exclude the presence of that. However, it should be borne in mind that why is an adverbial relative pronoun, and that it was earlier suggested in relation to (55a) above that why is a PP headed by a null counterpart of the preposition for, and may thus spell out a more abstract structure like FOR WHICH REASON. If so, the relative clause bracketed in (68a) above will have the immediate constituent structure below: (69)
[RELP why [REL that] there is a buzz in here]
Because why spells out a wh-phrase (FOR WHICH REASON) occupying specRELP in (61), the head REL position is free to be occupied by the complementiser that. On the view outlined above, argumental wh-pronouns like who/which occupy the head REL position of RELP (as in 67b above), but adverbial relative pronouns like why/where/when (by virtue of being PPs and hence wh-phrases) occupy the specifier position in RELP (as in 69 above). However, it should be 39
An interesting question to ask is what would block a structure such as the following, in which that is the head of a lower projection – say, FORCEP: (i) This is something [RELP [REL which] [FORCEP [FORCE that] we can’t do without]] The answer given in Radford (2018) is that non-initial that has to be licensed by a specific type of criterial specifier (e.g. a circumstantial adjunct), and the FORCE head in (i) has no specifier to license use of that.
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44 Background noted that such an analysis is potentially problematic in at least two respects. One is that treating who/which as occupying head-RELP and other wh-relative constituents as occupying spec-RELP is seemingly at variance with a principle posited by Rizzi (2000a: 288) which can be characterised as follows: (70)
Structural Uniformity Principle/SUP All constituents of the same type occupy the same criterial position.
SUP might lead us to suppose that all relative wh-constituents occupy the same criterial position within the clause. Since relative wh-phrases can be specifiers (but not heads), and wh-words can in principle be either heads or specifiers, it would appear that the only way of attaining a uniform analysis of wh-relativisers is to suppose that they all occupy the specifier position within RELP.40 A second problem is that if who/which spell out more abstract structures like WHICH PERSON/WHICH THING, they have the categorial status of DPs and thus are phrases which cannot in principle occupy the head REL position of RELP. However, any such uniform spec-RELP analysis (under which the criterial position for all relative wh-constituents is spec-RELP) leaves us with the question of why (for some speakers) wh-phrases can be followed by that, but not simple wh-words like who/which. One possible answer is that speakers who accept wh-phrase+that clauses but not wh-word+that clauses have a modified version of the Doubly Filled COMP Filter in their grammar to the effect that the edge of a peripheral projection cannot contain a wh-word which (asymmetrically) c-commands an immediately adjacent complementiser. But the downside of this is that any such filter would be a purely ad hoc descriptive artifice with no explanatory power: moreover, if (e.g.) which is the PF spellout of a larger DP like WHICH THING, this account would be untenable. The foregoing discussion suggests that while it seems clear that relative wh-constituents occupy spec-RELP if phrasal in nature (including complex wh-words like why which can be argued to be PPs headed by an abstract preposition), it is far less clear whether simplex wh-words like who occupy the head or specifier position within the RELP projection containing them. To simplify exposition, I shall henceforth treat all relative wh-constituents as positioned in spec-RELP: this simplifying assumption will not affect the analyses presented in the rest of the book in any substantive way.
40
However, it seems to me that the uniformity argument is not compelling, since one could argue that the criterial position for a wh-relativiser is the minimal (i.e. smallest possible) position on the edge of RELP. This would mean that simplex wh-words move to REL, whereas wh-phrases (and complex wh-words like why with a hidden phrasal structure) move to spec-RELP.
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1.6 Derivation of Relatives 1.6
45
Derivation of Relatives
In this section, I briefly sketch aspects of the derivation of relatives, restricting myself to the kind of (filler–) gap structures found in FARK (finite appositive, restrictive and kind) relatives in standard varieties of English. The discussion here will be relatively brief, for two reasons. Firstly, I have discussed the derivation of such clauses at length elsewhere (Radford 2016: 394–477), and there is no point in repeating that discussion here. And secondly, the main focus of this book is on the three types of (nonstandard) relative clause structure discussed in chapters 2–4, not on the standard types discussed in this section. As illustrated by the examples below (adapted from 1 above), FARK relatives in English can contain an (italicised) relativised wh-constituent associated with a gap (―) lower down in the clause: (71)
a. The allegations [which Trump made ― during his campaign] turned out to be fake b. These allegations, [which Trump made ― during his campaign], turned out to be fake
For succinctness, I shall refer to relative clauses containing a gap as ‘gap relatives’. In the case of appositive relative clauses like that bracketed in (71b), the gap arises via Wh-Movement of a constituent containing a wh-relativiser to its criterial position on the edge of a relative clause projection/RELP. On one view (as noted in the previous section), the constituent which undergoes movement is a wh-pronoun like which; on another, it is a DP headed by a wh-determiner (like which) modifying a matching copy of the antecedent, with the copy receiving a null spellout at PF if identical to the antecedent in relevant respects.41 On the matching variant of the Wh-Movement analysis, the appositive relative clause in (71b) will have the superficial syntactic structure shown in highly simplified form below: (72)
These allegations, [RELP which allegations [FORCEP Trump made ― during his campaign]], turned out to be fake
The relative DP which allegations originates as the complement of the verb made and leaves behind a gap in its original position when it moves to its criterial position at the front of the relative clause. At PF, the (underlined) 41
The matching analysis dates back to work by Lees (1960, 1961) and Chomsky (1965). It has been adopted and refined in much subsequent work, including Munn (1994), Sauerland (1998, 2003), Citko (2001), Salzmann (2006), and Cinque (2008, 2017).
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46 Background matching copy of the antecedent inside the bracketed relative clause is given a null spellout, so deriving the structure associated with (71b).42 A related Wh-Movement analysis has been proposed in work dating back six decades for restrictive relatives like (71a), with the difference that a (nonextraposed) restrictive relative clause is contained within the same DP as its antecedent, whereas an appositive relative clause forms a separate constituent from its antecedent, set off in a separate intonation group. On (one implementation of) the matching variant of this analysis, the nominal the allegations which Trump made . . . would have a derivation along the lines shown in highly simplified form below: (73)
[DP the [NP allegations [RELP which allegations [FORCEP Trump made — …]]]] WH-MOVEMENT
Under the analysis in (73), the bold-printed antecedent allegations is generated in situ (in an NP above the relative clause), and the relative operator phrase which allegations originates as the complement of the verb made, from where it undergoes a Wh-Movement operation that moves it (in successive-cyclic fashion) into its criterial position on the edge of RELP. At PF, the lower (italicised) copy of the relativised noun allegations inside the relative clause undergoes deletion (marked by strikethrough). In place of the overt wh-relativiser which, a null relativiser (WH) can be used, resulting in wh-less relatives like the allegations WH (that) Trump made during his campaign, with a structure essentially the same as that in (73), save that in place of which we have the null relativiser WH, and the head of RELP (not shown in 73) can optionally be spelled out as that.43 42
43
For more detailed discussion of the syntax of appositives, see Emonds (1979), Borsley (1997), de Vries (2002: 181–231), Cinque (2008), and Citko (2008). The matching analysis faces potential problems in accounting for contrasts like the following (noted by Stanton 2016): (i) *I go to class on Mondays, and Audrey goes to class on them too (ii) The days [that I go to class on] are Mondays and Wednesdays (iii) *Mondays, [which Audrey goes to class on], are always cold Stanton argues that (in the use illustrated here) on is a preposition which requires a temporal nominal as its complement and does not allow a pronominal complement like them in (i). If the underlying complement of on in (ii) is which days in a restrictive relative like (ii), the preposition on will have a null copy of which days as its complement, thereby satisfying the requirement for in to have a temporal nominal as its complement. However, if the complement of on in an appositive relative like that in (iii) is simply the pronoun which, the requirement for on to have a nominal complement will not be met, and the grammar will correctly specify that (iii) is ungrammatical. Such considerations seemingly lead to the conclusion that the matching
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1.6 Derivation of Relatives
47
However, there are restrictive relative structures like those below for which a Wh-Movement derivation like that outlined in (73) above is potentially problematic: (74)
a. The photos of himself [which Jim took] are great b. The strings [which he pulled] got him the job
Under the Wh-Movement analysis in (73), the italicised antecedents in (74) will be generated in situ, outside the bracketed relative clause. In the case of (74a), this poses the problem that there is no suitable (c-commanding) antecedent to bind the reflexive anaphor himself, so wrongly predicting that (74a) is ungrammatical. In the case of (74b), the problem is that strings is an idiom chunk nominal which is restricted to occurring as the complement of the verb pull, and yet this will not be the case in (74b) if strings is directly merged in a position outside the relative clause. Both problems can be overcome if the italicised antecedent is taken to serve as the complement of the relative determiner which, and if the DPs which photos of himself/which strings originate as the complement of the verbs taken/ pull respectively, and then undergo movement to the edge of the relative clause projection/RELP, and if the relativised nominal photos of himself/strings then moves (via a separate Antecedent Raising operation) to the edge of an NP immediately above the relative clause, leaving behind which – as shown for (74a) in schematic form below:44 (75)
ANTECEDENT RAISING [DP the [NP photos of himself [RELP which photos of himself [FORCEP Jim took — ]]]] WH-MOVEMENT
The lower copy of the raised antecedent receives a null spellout at PF (marked by strikethrough), thereby deriving the PF structure associated with (74a). The assumption that the relative DP which photos of himself originates in the analysis is plausible for restrictives, but not for appositives. However, this conclusion is hard to reconcile with (archaic) sentences like the following:
44
(iv) He rode twenty miles to see her picture in the house of a stranger, which stranger politely insisted on his acceptance of it (=7a) I set aside here the issue of whether the wh-phrase which photos of himself transits through the edge of other projections (e.g. vP, FINP) on its way to the edge of RELP. According to McCawley (1981), the Antecedent Raising derivation dates back to an unpublished manuscript by Brame (1967), mentioned in Brame (1976: 126–7). It was elaborated on in subsequent work by Chiba (1972), Schachter (1973), Vergnaud (1974), and many others after them, including Åfarli (1994), Kayne (1994), Bianchi (1999), Zwart (2000), Bhatt (2002), de Vries (2002), and Sportiche (2015).
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48 Background gap position as the complement of the verb took allows himself to be locally bound by Jim at the relevant stage of derivation, thereby accounting for the well-formedness of (74a). If sentence (74b) has a similar derivation in which the DP which strings originates as the complement of pulled, we satisfy the requirement for the noun strings to originate in a position where it is (contained within a DP which is) the complement of the verb pull. The key point to note is that in structures like (75), the antecedent originates in a position internal to the relative clause and is subsequently raised into a position external to it.45 The Antecedent Raising derivation sketched in (75) above can be extended from wh-relatives like that in (74a) above to wh-less relatives like the following: (76)
The photos of himself [(that) Jim took] are great
On the assumptions made here, (76) will have essentially the same Antecedent Raising derivation as in (75), save that there will be a null wh-determiner (WH) in place of which in spec-RELP, and the head REL position of REL can either be spelled out as that or given a silent spellout. Thus, the relevant nominal in (76) will have the superficial structure below: (77)
[DP the [NP photos of himself [RELP WH photos of himself (that) [FORCEP Jim took ―]]]]
On this view, the presence or absence of the relativiser which and of the complementiser that is simply a superficial issue of PF spellout. However, while some types of restrictive relative structure require an Antecedent Raising derivation like (75/77), there are other types which instead require a Wh-Movement derivation like (73), including that bracketed below: (78)
John noticed a man and Mary spotted a woman [who it seems were behaving suspiciously]
Here, the relative pronoun who has split antecedents (namely man and woman). An Antecedent Raising derivation for such a sentence would be untenable, since it would require us to assume that the subject of were behaving suspiciously is a DP like who man and woman, and that man subsequently raises into a position on the edge of an NP which is the complement of noticed whereas woman raises into an entirely different position on the edge of an NP which is 45
It could be that (for economy reasons) where the raised antecedent is a noun (like strings), its ultimate landing site is the head N position of the NP above the relative clause (as proposed by Donati & Cecchetto 2011), whereas when the antecedent is an NP like photos of himself, its landing site is the specifier position within NP.
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1.6 Derivation of Relatives
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the complement of spotted – and the conjunction and which links the two (in who man and woman) somehow magically disappears. Since this is implausible (inter alia because it involves multiple violations of the Coordinate Structure Constraint of Ross 1967, barring extraction out of a coordinate structure), it is more likely that a sentence like (78) has a Wh-Movement derivation in which the antecedents are generated in situ, and who wh-moves (in a successive-cyclic fashion) from being the subject/specifier of were behaving suspiciously to becoming the specifier of the relative projection RELP, leaving behind a gap in the position out of which it moves. If so, the relative clause bracketed in (78) above will have the superficial structure below:46 (79)
[RELP who [FORCEP it seems ― were behaving suspiciously]]
The relative pronoun who will have split antecedents (man and woman), in exactly the same way as other pronouns (like the personal pronoun they below) can have (italicised) split antecedents: (80)
I noticed a man and you spotted a woman, but they weren’t people we knew
A similar Wh-Movement analysis can be proposed for wh-less split-antecedent relatives like: (81)
John noticed a man and Mary spotted a woman [(that) it seems were behaving suspiciously]
except that in place of who there is a null relativiser (WH) which moves to the edge of RELP, and the head REL position of RELP can optionally be spelled out as that. The key point to note about sentences like (78) is that they involve Wh-Movement without Antecedent Raising: the antecedent is generated in situ in a position external to the relative clause, and there is an (overt or null) wh-relativiser which moves from some lower position to the edge of RELP. A second type of relative clause which proves incompatible with an Antecedent Raising derivation is illustrated below: (82)
46
This is the photo of John [which he hates ―]
The discussion here implicitly takes who to be a plural relative pronoun which has no complement. An alternative possibility is to take who to be a relative determiner with a silent light noun like PEOPLE as its complement (so that who is the superficial spellout of a DP with the fuller structure WHICH PEOPLE).
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50 Background The key point of interest here is that he can refer to John.47 An Antecedent Raising derivation for the type of relative clause bracketed in (82) wrongly rules out the possibility of he referring to John, for the following reason. Under the Antecedent Raising derivation, the wh-DP which photo of John will originate in the gap position (―) as the complement of hates, and then will undergo a Wh-Movement operation which ultimately moves it into the spec-RELP position at the beginning of the relative clause. Subsequently, the NP photo of John will undergo Antecedent Raising and thereby raise up to become the specifier of a higher NP, so that the DP the photo of John which he hates has the structure shown below (simplified in various ways): (83)
ANTECEDENT RAISING [DP the [NP photo of John [RELP which photo of John [FORCEP he hates which photo of John]]]] WH-MOVEMENT
However, since the lowest copy of John at the foot/end of the structure in (83) is c-commanded by he, Binding Theory wrongly predicts that John cannot be coreferential to he here: this is because Binding Principle C specifies that no (copy of an) R-expression (i.e. a referring noun expression like John) can be coreferential to any (copy of a) constituent c-commanding it. Accordingly, an Antecedent Raising derivation would wrongly predict he can’t refer to John in (82). Since he can indeed refer to John in a sentence like (82), this means there must be an alternative derivation available for such sentences. Under the dual derivation account of restrictive relatives outlined here, this alternative derivation involves the antecedent NP photo of John being directly generated in situ above the relative clause/RELP, and the relative pronoun which being whmoved from the complement of hates to the edge of RELP, as shown below: (84)
[DP the [NP photo of John [RELP which [FORCEP he hates which ]]]] WH-MOVEMENT
In the case of a structure like (84), Binding Theory will not prevent he from being interpreted as coreferential to John. This is because Principle B specifies that a non-anaphoric pronoun like he cannot be bound by any c-commanding
47
He could also refer to someone other than John, but this is irrelevant to the point being made here.
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1.6 Derivation of Relatives
51
constituent in the same TP: but since John is not in the same TP as (and does not c-command) he, nothing prevents he from referring back to John.48 The overall conclusion which our brief discussion of structures like (74–84) leads to is that restrictive relative clauses are potentially structurally ambiguous in respect of whether the antecedent originates in a position internal or external to the relative clause.49 But what about kind relatives? Benincà and Cinque (2014) argue that kind relatives are like restrictives (and unlike appositives) in that the antecedent can either be generated externally to the relative clause and associated with a matching wh-moved copy inside the relative clause, or be generated inside the relative clause and be raised into a position outside it by Antecedent Raising. Thus, a kind relative like that bracketed in (85) below involving relativisation of an (italicised) idiom chunk nominal requires a derivation under which the nominal is generated inside the relative clause as the complement of the verb avutohad and is then raised to a position outside the relative clause by Antecedent Raising: (85)
La parte [che deve aver avuto] The part that he.must have had ‘The role that he must have played is this’
è is
questa this
By contrast, in a structure like (86) below, the italicised relativised nominal must originate outside the bracketed relative clause (above the pronoun luihe), since if it were to originate inside the relative clause as the complement of the verb ritenereconsider, there would be violation of Principle C of Binding Theory (preventing any copy of a referring nominal like Mario from being coreferential to a constituent c-commanding it) because the lower copy of Mario would be c-commanded by luihe, and hence the grammar would wrongly predict that lui cannot refer to Mario:
48
49
Things become more complicated, however, if we analyse a relative pronoun like which as containing a silent copy of its antecedent. This is because if which has the fuller structure which photo of John, there will be a copy of John at the foot of the relative clause which is c-commanded by he (i.e. the structure will be much as in 83 above, except for the absence of Antecedent Raising), so wrongly predicting that John cannot be coreferential to he. One way round this might be to assume that which has the more limited structure which photo. For more detailed discussion of the syntax of restrictive relatives, see Safir (1986), Heim (1987), Fabb (1990), Borsley (1997), Åfarli (1994), Sag (1997), Wiltschko (1998), Alexiadou et al. (2000), Bhatt (2002, 2015), de Vries (2002), Aoun & Li (2003), Cecchetto (2005), Donati (2006), Inada (2007), Caponigro & Pearl (2008, 2009), Donati & Cecchetto (2011), Cinque (2013), Cecchetto & Donati (2015), Sportiche (2015), Douglas (2016).
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52 Background (86)
Giorgio è l’unico fan di Marioi [che luii deve ritenere degno dei Giorgio is the.only fan of Mario that he must consider worthy of.the suoi favori] his favours ‘Giorgio is the only fan of Marioi that hei must consider worthy of his favours’
Since relative clauses like that in (85) require a derivation in which the antecedent originates internally within the relative clause and raises to a position outside it, whereas conversely relative clauses like that in (86) require the antecedent to be generated in situ outside the relative clause, Benincà and Cinque conclude that there must in principle be two alternative derivations available for them. The overall conclusion to be drawn from our discussion in this section is the following. Appositive relatives have a derivation involving Wh-Movement of (a constituent containing) an overt wh-relativiser to the edge of RELP. By contrast, restrictive and kind relatives are structurally ambiguous in respect of whether the antecedent originates in a position external to the relative clause and is associated with an (overt or null) wh-relativiser which moves to the edge of RELP, or whether the antecedent originates as the complement of an (overt or null) relative determiner which undergoes Wh-Movement to the edge of RELP, with the antecedent subsequently undergoing Antecedent Raising to the edge of a superordinate NP outside the relative clause.50 1.7
Summary
This chapter began with a brief outline of the overall structure of the book in §1.1, noting that Chapter 1 would provide an introduction to the main types of relative clause found in standard registers and varieties of English, and chapters 2–4 would deal with three non-standard types of relative clause found in colloquial English (exploring resumptive relatives in Chapter 2, noncanonical prepositional relatives in Chapter 3, and gapless relatives in Chapter 4). I then went on in §1.2 to present a brief typology of relative clause structures, noting that the main focus of the book would be on finite restrictive, appositive and kind relatives (collectively referred to as FARK relatives). In §1.3, I examined the structure of the clause periphery in FARK relatives, concluding that this involves a RELP constituent housing an (overt or null) wh-relativiser, with a FORCEP constituent below RELP which is 50
On the idea that restrictive relatives are structurally ambiguous, see Heim (1987), Sauerland (1998, 1999), Hulsey & Sauerland (2006), and Radford (2016: 394–477).
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1.7 Summary
53
characteristically declarative in FORCE in restrictives, but which can be interrogative, exclamative, imperative or hortative in force in appositive or kind relatives. In §1.4, I discussed the possibility that infinitival relatives may have a truncated peripheral structure: I argued that (like FARK relatives) they contain a RELP projection housing an overt or null wh-relativiser, but conceded that they may be truncated below the level of RELP and may perhaps have a reduced RELP+FINP periphery. In §1.5, I examined the nature of the relativisers used to introduce relative clauses. I argued in favour of analysing that as a complementiser occupying the head REL position in RELP, and of treating relative wh-constituents as occupying spec-RELP if phrasal in nature. I argued that relative adverbs like when/where/why have a phrasal status by virtue of being concealed PPs headed by a silent preposition. I noted that it is far from clear whether simple wh-words like which/who occupy the head or specifier position within RELP, but said that (for consistency of exposition) I would make the simplifying assumption that all relative wh-constituents occupy spec-RELP. In §1.6, I argued that appositive relatives have a derivation involving Wh-Movement of (a constituent containing) an overt wh-relativiser to the edge of RELP. But I went on to argue that restrictive and kind relatives are structurally ambiguous as to whether the antecedent originates in a position outside the relative clause and is linked to an (overt or null) wh-relativiser which moves to the edge of RELP, or whether the antecedent originates as the complement of an (overt or null) wh-determiner which undergoes Wh-Movement to the edge of RELP, with the antecedent subsequently undergoing Antecedent Raising to the edge of a superordinate NP outside the relative clause. Having provided a background discussion of the nature, structure and derivation of three types of gap relatives found in standard varieties of English in this chapter, I now move on to the main part of the book, which deals with three non-standard types of relative clause found in colloquial English. I begin by looking at resumptive relatives in Chapter 2, before turning to look at non-canonical prepositional relatives in Chapter 3, and at gapless relatives in Chapter 4.
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2 Resumptive Relatives
2.1
Introduction
It has long been observed that informal registers of English allow relative clauses like those bracketed below in which the (underlined) antecedent is reprised by an (italicised) resumptive pronoun: (1)
a. King Kong is a movie [which you’ll laugh yourself sick if you see it] (Ross 1967: 433) b. I really liked flying in an airplane [that I understand how it works] (Bever et al. 1976: 150) c. There was one guy [who I didn’t think that he would come] (Kroch 1981: 127) d. There are always guests [who I am curious about what they are going to say] (Prince 1990: 482) e. There really may be a lot of interaction [which the kid doesn’t hear any of it] (Prince 1995: 4, citing an example produced by Lila Gleitman, from the Kroch corpus) f. We’re afraid of things [that we don’t know what they are] (Ferreira & Swets, 2005: 263)
Such structures will be referred to here as resumptive relatives, for succinctness.1 In this chapter, I begin by presenting an overview of existing research on resumptive relatives in §2.2, and identifying key hypotheses raised by this research. I then go on to test these hypotheses in relation to a set of empirical data on resumptive relatives taken mainly from my recordings of live, unscripted broadcasts on British radio and TV stations, but also including some internet-sourced data. These are supplemented by further data from 1
This term is potentially controversial, since the kind of resumptive pronouns found in English relatives are termed intrusive in Chao & Sells (1983) and Sells (1984), on the grounds that the resumptive pronouns found in some other languages have very different properties. See McCloskey (2002, 2006, 2017b) and Asudeh (2004, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012) for a crosslinguistic typology of resumptive relatives.
54
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2.2 Existing Research
55
a corpus of resumptive relatives collected by Tony Kroch at the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1980s, which Tony kindly made available to me: I shall refer to his data as the Kroch corpus. In §2.3, I use my own data to test whether (as widely claimed) resumptives in English are only used to relativise constituents in inaccessible positions. I subsequently look at what my data tell us about aspects of the derivation of resumptive relatives (e.g. whether or not they involve movement), examining the syntax of relativisers in §2.4, pronominal resumptives in §2.5, and nominal resumptives in §2.6. I then go on to explore potential parallels between resumptive relatives and topic clauses in §2.7. I conclude with a summary of the main findings of this chapter in §2.8.
2.2
Existing Research
There has been extensive discussion of resumptive relatives in the research literature.2 One of the issues raised in that discussion concerns whether or not they are grammatical. Ross (1967: 432) expresses the view that they are ‘perfectly grammatical’ and notes (1967: 434) that they are ‘common in almost everyone’s speech’. Similarly, Cresswell (2002: 40) claims that ‘they are fully grammatical constructions’, and Cann et al. (2005) argue that resumptive relatives are an integral part of the grammar of colloquial English. A very different view is voiced by Bever et al. (1976: 150), who claim that resumptive relatives are ‘unacceptable’, even though they occur in everyday speech. Experimental research by Alexopoulou & Keller (2002) reaches essentially the same conclusion – as does much other experimental research, most recently Morgan & Wagers (2017). One factor which may lead to speakers treating resumptives as unacceptable is the influence of prescriptive education, since resumptive relatives are ‘regarded as substandard by normative grammarians’ (Ross 1967: 432); this may be because resumptives are typically used in 2
See (among many others) Ross (1967, 1986), Morgan (1972), Perlmutter (1972), Erteschik-Shir (1973, 1992), Bever et al. (1976), McCloskey (1979, 1990, 2002, 2006, 2017a, 2017b), Kroch (1981), Chao & Sells (1983), Sells (1984, 1987), Prince (1990, 1995), Contreras (1991), Demirdache (1991), Shlonsky (1992), Harris (1993), Bondaruk (1995), Pérez-Leroux (1995), Aoun (1996, 2000), Suñer (1998), Varlokosta & Armon-Lotem (1998), Sharvit (1999), Aoun, Choueiri & Hornstein (2001), McKee & McDaniel (2001), Cresswell (2002), Rouveret (2002, 2011), Boeckx (2003, 2007, 2012), Herrmann (2003, 2005), Asudeh (2004, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012), Merchant (2004a), Cann et al. (2005), Ferreira & Swets (2005), Filppula (2005), Grolla (2005), Mesthrie (2005), Miller (2005), Mufenwe (2005), Patrick (2005), Miller & FernandezVest (2006), Alexopoulou (2006, 2010), Alexopoulou & Keller (2007), Fiorentino (2007), Hornstein (2007), Bianchi (2008), Friedmann et al. (2008), Herdan (2008), Omaki & Nakao (2010), Heestand, Xiang & Polinsky (2011), Hofmeister & Norcliffe (2013), Polinsky et al. (2013), Sichel (2014), Blythe (2016), Morgan & Wagers (2017).
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56 Resumptive Relatives colloquial registers, and hence are stigmatised in much the same way as other colloquialisms such as gonna/gotta/wanna. One of the earliest analyses of resumptive relatives is to be found in Ross (1967: 432–4), who claims that resumptive relatives differ from gap relatives in not being subject to island constraints (i.e. constraints which bar structures in which a gap inside an island is left behind by movement of a constituent to a position outside the island, where an island is a structure which is a barrier to extraction). Ross draws a distinction between two different types of movement rule, namely (i) chopping rules which leave behind a gap at the extraction site, and (ii) copying rules which leave behind a resumptive pronoun that spells out the person/number features of the moved constituent. He argues that chopping rules are subject to island constraints but copying rules are not. In the case of a sentence like (1a), the islandhood property of adjuncts will prevent which from being moved out of the adjunct if-clause island by a chopping rule which leaves a gap behind, with the result that the sentence is ungrammatical if it is omitted. However, use of a copy-movement rule that leaves behind a resumptive pronoun like it does not induce an island violation, because copying rules are not subject to island constraints. A variant of this analysis is proposed by Perlmutter (1972), who maintains that all movement rules leave behind (what he terms) a shadow pronoun, and that there is parametric variation between languages with respect to whether or not the shadow pronoun is deleted, with certain types of Shadow Deletion operation being subject to island constraints. A related analysis is proposed by Kayne (1981: 115), who suggests that resumptive relatives involve Wh-Movement followed by a Pronoun Insertion operation which spells out the wh-trace as a pronoun. Pesetsky (1998) adopts a similar approach, claiming that resumptive pronouns are partial pronunciations of traces (in that they spell out only the person number, gender and case features of the moved constituent); and in much the same way, McDaniel & Cowart (1999) and Herrmann (2003) also claim that resumptive pronouns spell out traces. However, other researchers have argued against the view that resumptives spell out copies of moved constituents. Chomsky (1977) does so on the (theoretical) grounds that ‘pronouns are base-generated’ and ‘the power of transformations is so restricted that pronouns (or, for that matter, lexical items in general) cannot be introduced by transformation’ (Chomsky 1977: 127, fn. 12). McKee & McDaniel (2001) argue in a similar vein that it is not obvious why (under the copy theory of movement), movement should result in a pronoun being left behind at the extraction site rather than a full copy of the antecedent. They also point out that it is not obvious why other types of
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wh-trace cannot be spelled out as resumptive pronouns: for example, they claim that the resumptive relative structure in (1c) above has no interrogative counterpart like (2):3
3
Cann et al. (2005) claim that there is a constraint against the use of resumptives in interrogative structures like (i) below and quantificational structures like (ii): (i) (ii)
*Which book did John read it? *Every book, John read it
Likewise, Alexopoulou and Keller (2002) present experimental evidence that the use of resumptives in interrogatives is judged unacceptable, even in cases like (iii) below where extraction is out of a strong island: (iii)
Who does Jane think that Mary meets the people that will fire him?
In a similar vein, Boeckx (2003) notes that resumptives are dispreferred in questions – a claim reiterated in Alexopoulou (2010). One could in principle account for relatives (but not interrogatives) leaving resumptives behind by supposing that resumptives arise from Antecedent Raising, and hence do not occur in interrogatives (see Sichel 2014). However, Sells (1987: 262) counterclaims that ‘resumptive pronouns are not limited to relative clauses’, and indeed resumptives are reported to occur in (certain types of) questions in Irish (McCloskey 1979), Lebanese Arabic (McCloskey 2006), Swedish (Engdahl 1980, 1982), colloquial Hebrew (Sharvit 1999), and Greek (Tsimpli 1999). Furthermore, resumptives have been reported to occur in English interrogatives, particularly with discourse-linked which-phrases – as the examples below illustrate: (iv)
Which guys did you say that you didn’t know whether their friends were gonna rat on them or not? (Kayne 1984: 191, fn. 20) (v) Which of the linguists do you think that if Mary marries him, then everyone will be happy? (Sells 1984) (vi) Which picture of John were you wondering [whether it was going to win a prize at the exposition]? (Pesetsky 1998: 28) (vii) Who did the police say that finding his car took all morning? (Merchant 2004a) (viii) Who do you think that if the voters elect him, the country will go to ruin? (Merchant 2004a)
My own data also contain the following examples of resumptive interrogatives: (ix) (x) (xi) (xii)
Who out of them d’you instinctively say: ‘she’s got to go through?’ (Cheryl Cole, ITV; capitals mark emphatic stress) Which of those two sides, the way they’re set up suits the game best? (Matt Holland, Talksport Radio) I’m trying to sort out which modules it’s desirable they don’t clash (Administrator, University of Essex; Radford 2018: 78) I wonder how many other clubs if their entire first team is on that kind of money (Listener, Talksport Radio)
In addition, they also contain the following example of a resumptive occurring in a free relative, which is unlikely to involve Antecedent Raising, since the relativiser what has no overt antecedent: (xiii) That’s what he got a knighthood for it (Darren Gough, Talksport Radio)
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58 Resumptive Relatives (2)
*Who didn’t you think that he would come?
Furthermore, numerous researchers have argued against the wh-trace account of resumptives on empirical grounds, pointing out that the claim that resumptives are personal pronouns which spell out the (person/number/gender) phifeatures of their antecedent is undermined by sentences such as the following (from the Kroch corpus): (3)
a. He’s got this lifelong friend who he takes money from the parish to give to this lifelong friend (Prince 1990: 492) b. There was one prisoner that we didn’t understand why the guy was even in jail (Kroch 1981: 129) c. You assigned me to a paper which I don’t know anything about the subject (Prince 1990: 492) d. I have a manager, Joe Scandolo, who we’ve been together over 20 years (Prince 1990: 492) e. It came up in the charge to the jury, which we have been discussing what that meant (Kroch 1981: 129)
Thus, the (italicised) resumptive expression is a nominal which is a copy of the antecedent in (3a), a nominal which is entirely distinct from the antecedent in (3b, 3c), a personal pronoun which refers to both antecedent and speaker in (3d) and a pronoun which is a demonstrative rather than a personal pronoun in (3e). It seems unlikely that relative clauses like those in (3) arise via movement. Chomsky (1977) argues on the basis of the theoretical considerations outlined above that in resumptive relatives which involve the use of a relative pronoun ‘relativization involves no movement rule at all but simply interprets a base-generated pronoun in the relative clause’. In a similar vein, Kroch (1981: 129) argues that structures like (3) provide empirical evidence that ‘relative clauses with resumptive elements’ involve ‘base-generation rather than movement’, so that ‘wh-words and phrases are base-generated in COMP.’ Likewise, Suñer (1998) argues that resumptive relatives involve a relative operator merged in situ in spec-CP: and Merchant (2004a: 471) similarly argues that ‘resumptive-binding operators are base-generated in SpecCP’, and are caseless.4 If resumptive relatives involve a base-generated relativiser in spec-CP associated with a base-generated resumptive inside the relative clause, this will mean that a sentence like (1a) will involve which being merged in situ on the edge of the relative clause projection (RELP/CP), and the 4
However, if operators bind variables and (as illustrated in 5 and 6 below) resumptives cannot function as variables, the term operator could be argued to be inappropriate. For this reason, I prefer to use the more neutral term relativiser.
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resumptive pronoun being merged in situ as the complement of the verb see. In the light of the claim by Kuno (1976: 420) that ‘A relative clause must be a statement about its head noun’, this requirement will only be satisfied if the head of a relative clause is coindexed with a trace or resumptive (according to Kroch 1981). Kroch goes on to suggest (1981: 131) that ‘the interpretation of resumptive pronouns in relative clauses follows the same rule that governs coreference in left dislocations’. McCloskey (2017a: 21) echoes this, arguing that ‘resumptive pronouns are just pronouns that enter into the kinds of semantic and pragmatic interactions that all pronouns enter into’. Merchant (2004a) provides further evidence in support of base-generation, from case considerations. He notes that in resumptive relatives introduced by an overt relative pronoun like (4) below, the relative pronoun is always caseless: (4)
That’s the guy who the cops said finding his car took all day
Thus in (4) the italicised relative pronoun is in the default/caseless form who, even though the underlined resumptive is genitive. Since in A-bar movement structures, the moved constituent and the copy it leaves behind typically carry the same case, such data argue in favour of the wh-pronoun not moving from the resumptive position but rather being directly generated in situ, Merchant maintains.5 Additional evidence for positing that resumptives do not involve movement comes from the observation made by Chao and Sells (1983) and Sells (1984) that resumptives have a different interpretation from gaps. More specifically, 5
See Schütze (2001) on the nature of default case. One might conceivably try and defend a movement analysis of sentences like (4) by arguing that the case properties of a relativised constituent must be visible on the head (i.e. highest copy) or foot (i.e. lowest copy) of the movement chain. In relatives involving the fronting of a whose-constituent, case is visible on the head of the Wh-Movement chain; but in cases like (4), it is not visible on the head of the wh-chain (since who is caseless), so instead is made visible on his at the foot of the chain. The Kroch corpus contains the single solitary example below of a structure in which genitive case is spelled out on both the head and foot of the chain: (i) Ron X, whose many of his works you may know (Bill Labov, Kroch corpus) However, the whose-clause here may well be a sporadic processing error that represents a blend between the formal style gap relative structure bracketed in (ii) below, and the informal style resumptive relative structure bracketed in (iii): (ii) Ron X, [whose many works you know ―] (iii) Ron X, [who you know many of his works] As noted in Chapter 1, fn. 26, research suggests that relative whom/whose have essentially fallen out of use in contemporary colloquial English (among younger speakers, at least).
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60 Resumptive Relatives gaps are interpreted as bound variables, but resumptives are interpreted as bound pronouns. Consequently, only gaps (not resumptives) appear in relatives with a QP antecedent headed by a quantifier like every/each/no/any – as illustrated below: (5)
a. There is no dispute that I think ― can ever be resolved by strike action b. *There is no dispute that I think that it can ever be resolved by strike action
(6)
a. We stood firm on every point that we thought ― was important b. *We stood firm on every point that we thought it was important
This is consistent with the view that gaps are bound variables which arise via movement, but resumptives are bound pronouns that are merged separately from (but anaphorically linked to) their antecedents. A number of other differences have been reported between gap and resumptive relatives which I will only touch on briefly here. For one thing, a gap relative like (7a) below induces a weak crossover effect (because a null operator moves from the gap position to the front of the bracketed relative clause and thereby crosses his), but a resumptive relative like (7b) does not: (7)
a. *He’s the boy [that they told his mother – had left] b. He’s the boy [that they told his mother he had left]
Secondly, reconstruction effects are permitted in sentences like (8) below if a gap is used (allowing the underlined antecedent nominal to be reconstructed into the gap position), but not if an (italicised) resumptive is used: (8)
a. It’s hard to take a picture of himself that John will admit that he likes ―/*it b. These are the kind of strings that you have to pull ―/*them to get into Oxford c. Mark Kermode generally has an opinion of hisi work that every filmmakeri respects ―/*it
And thirdly, a gap relative can license a parasitic gap (ø) in a sentence like (9a) below, whereas a resumptive cannot – as we see from the ungrammaticality of (9b): (9)
a. This is a patient [who they hadn’t realised ― was seriously ill before examining ø] b. *This is a patient [who they hadn’t realised that he was seriously ill before examining ø]
Differences like those in (6–9) are consistent with the view that gaps involve movement, but resumptives are base-generated in situ.
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Further potential evidence in support of resumptive structures being base-generated comes from acquisition studies which suggest that (normally developing or impaired) children who have problems in producing/comprehending structures involving A-bar movement produce resumptive relatives in place of gap relatives in languages such as English (de Villiers 1988; Pérez-Leroux 1995), Greek (Varlokosta & Armon-Lotem 1998), French (Ferreiro et al. 1976; Labelle 1990), Spanish (Ferreiro et al. 1976; Pérez-Leroux 1995), and Hebrew (Varlokosta & Armon-Lotem 1998; Günzberg-Kerbel et al. 2008; Friedmann et al. 2008). A further issue raised in the research literature on resumptive relatives concerns their distribution. Erteshik Shir (1973: 119–22) observed that resumptive relatives in English are generally only acceptable in contexts like (10a) below where gap relatives are unacceptable (because they would lead to violation of syntactic constraints), not in sentences like (10b) where a gap is acceptable:6 (10)
a. This is a proposal which I can’t remember why it/*― was made b. This is a proposal which he regrets making ―/*it
A number of other researchers have likewise claimed that resumptive pronouns are used only in contexts where (gap-creating) movement is blocked (Borer 1984; Shlonsky 1992; Aoun 1996, 2000; Bernstein et al. 1998; Varlokosta & Armon-Lotem, 1998; Aoun, Choueiri & Hornstein, 2001; Hornstein 2001, 2007; McKee & McDaniel 2001; Grolla, 2005). Friedmann et al. (2008: 286) and Sichel (2014: 663) suggest that movement-derived resumptives arise via Antecedent Raising, with the tail of the movement chain being given a null spellout wherever possible, but being spelled out as a resumptive as a last resort wherever a null copy is illicit.7 Several experimental studies have provided evidence that resumptive pronouns are preferred to gaps in island contexts (i.e. in contexts where a gap would give rise to an island violation), but conversely gaps are preferred to resumptives in non-island contexts (i.e. in contexts where use of a gap would not induce an island violation): see e.g. McDaniel & Cowart (1999), McKee
6
7
In a similar vein, a study by Shlonsky (1992) on Hebrew and Palestinian Arabic came to the conclusion that ‘resumptive pronouns only occur as a last resort, when wh-movement fails to yield a grammatical output’ (Shlonsky 1992: 443), and that ‘resumptive pronouns are sanctioned only where wh-traces are not’ (Shlonsky 1992: 450). However, the ‘last resort’ condition on the use of resumptive relatives is potentially challenged by data from Willis (2000), who notes that gap relatives and resumptive relatives in Welsh overlap in certain positions (e.g. an embedded subject or prepositional object can be relativised using either the gap or resumptive strategies).
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62 Resumptive Relatives and McDaniel (2001), and Ackerman et al. (2014). However, the evidence is by no means unequivocal, because other experimental studies have reported that (even in island contexts) resumptives are not rated as more acceptable than gaps: see e.g. Alexpoulou & Keller (2007), Omaki & Nakao (2010), Heestand, Xiang & Polinsky (2011), Clemens et al. (2012), Polinsky et al. (2013), and Blythe (2016). Some studies report that use of resumptives in any context incurs an acceptability penalty (Keffala 2011; Keffala & Goodall 2011), while others report that resumptives are preferred to gaps only in cases where use of a gap induces multiple/strong constraint violations (McDaniel & Cowart 1999; Keffala 2011; Keffala & Goodall 2011; Han et al. 2012). Morgan & Wagers (2017) adduce experimental evidence that the less acceptable a gap relative is, the more likely a resumptive is to be used, but that islands boost the use of resumptives beyond what the acceptability of the corresponding gap structure would predict. However, some have argued that experiments testing acceptability may have their results skewed by the possibility of prescriptive education influencing acceptability judgements, and that experiments testing reading or comprehension yield more robust results and do indeed demonstrate a processing facilitation effect for resumptives. For example, Beltrama (2013) and Beltrama & Xiang (2016) found evidence that resumptives facilitate comprehension in island contexts, from experiments in which subjects were asked how difficult it was to comprehend a given sentence. And Hofmeister & Norcliffe (2013) provide evidence from a self-paced reading study that a resumptive at the tail of a complex dependency improves reading speed compared to a gap. A second constraint on the distribution of resumptive relatives posited in the literature is that an (italicised) resumptive can occur in contexts where a gap is permitted if the extraction site is sufficiently far from the (bold-printed) relativiser or (underlined) antecedent. Erteshik-Shir (1992) illustrates this distance effect in terms of the following contrasts: (11)
a. b. c. d.
This is the girl that John likes ―/*her This is the girl that Peter said that John likes ―/??her This is the girl that Peter said that John thinks that Paul likes ―/?her This is the girl that Peter said that John thinks that yesterday his mother had given some cakes to ?―/her.
Such data suggest that the further away that the italicised resumptive pronoun is from the relativiser/antecedent, the more acceptable the use of a resumptive becomes: this has been claimed to be for processing reasons, since the
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resumptive serves to refresh the relevant dependency and thereby reduce the processing cost associated with a long-distance dependency (Kluender & Kutas, 1993; Gibson 1998, 2000; Gordon, Hendrick, & Johnson 2001; Gordon, Hendrick, & Levine 2002; Grodner & Gibson 2005). Dickey (1996) hypothesises that information about the phi-features (i.e. person/ number/gender features) of a filler deteriorates with embedding, and that resumptive pronouns help overcome this problem because they carry phifeatures and can access their antecedents anaphorically (as in the case of discourse anaphora). McKee & McDaniel (2001) produce experimental evidence that a similar distance effect is found in sentences such as: (12)
This is the boy who, whenever it rains, he cries
where a relatively complex underlined peripheral constituent intervenes between the bold-printed relativiser and the italicised resumptive, so allowing the use of a resumptive. A number of studies report that while resumptives never lead to more acceptable structures than gaps, increased embedding depth can reduce the penalty for resumptives (Alexopoulou & Keller 2007; Heestand, Xiang & Polinsky 2011, Hofmeister & Norcliffe 2013). A third constraint on the distribution of resumptive relatives is noted by Prince (1990), who reports finding an (in)definiteness effect in restrictives (in the sense that resumptives tend to be used in restrictives only where the head/ antecedent is indefinite), but not appositives (where resumptives occur with both definite and indefinite heads). Since relatives with indefinite heads are generally kind-defining, Benincà & Cinque (2014) reinterpret this finding as meaning that resumptives occur only in appositive and kind(-defining) relatives, not in restrictives. They illustrate this claim with the following contrast from the northern Italian dialect Paduan, where the use of an italicised resumptive is grammatical in an appositive relative like (13a) below and in a kind relative like (13b), but not in a restrictive like (13c): (13) a. Mario, che el gaveva dedicà la vita ala scola, se gà ritirà Mario, that he had dedicated the life to.the school, self has retired ‘Mario, who devoted his life to the school, has retired’ b. Mario ze un professore ch el gà dedicà la so vita ala scola Mario is a teacher that he has dedicated the his life to.the school ‘Mario is a teacher who has devoted his life to the school’ c. Un professore che (*el) gaveva dedicà la vita ala scola se gà ritirà A teacher that (*he) had dedicated the life to.the school self has retired ‘A teacher who had devoted his life to the school has retired’
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64 Resumptive Relatives However, Benincà and Cinque concede that they have no explanation for this asymmetry – and in any case, their claim that restrictives never contain resumptives is potentially undermined by sentences like (4, 7, 11) above. My own data on resumptive relatives would appear to lend empirical support to Benincà and Cinque’s claims. More specifically, my data include 188 resumptive appositive relatives like those bracketed below (where the relativiser is italicised, and the resumptive is underlined): (14)
a. There’s a little bit of a trend there, [which let’s hope that continues] (Listener, Talksport Radio) b. He’s a player who plays off instinct, [which there’s nothing wrong with that] (Stuart Robson, Talksport Radio) c. Bar a couple of bites on my leg, [which God knows where they happened], I haven’t found mosquitoes to be a problem (Ian Abrahams, Talksport Radio) d. Then we had Steve McClaren, [who, do you know what the thing about Steve McClaren was?] (Steve Claridge, BBC Radio 5) e. I was going to ask you about the central defender for Palermo, [who I’m not going to ask you how to pronounce his name] (Alan Green, BBC Radio 5) f. We keep talking about Cesc Fabregas, [who we all love the way he plays] (Gareth Southgate, ITV)
My data also contain 238 resumptive kind relatives like those bracketed below: (15)
a. Kevin Pietersen is the kind of player [who, he likes to send a message to the opposition] (Ian Chappell, BBC Radio 5) b. He’s that sort of player [who, he’ll bat 3, probably, in the one-dayers] (Jonathan Agnew, BBC Radio 5 Sport Extra) c. They’re the type of team [that, once they’re on the slippery slope, they’ve no way back] (Mark Nicholas, Channel 5 TV) d. Klinsmann is someone [that how can you argue with what he did as a footballer?] (Sean Wheelock, BBC Radio 5) e. Is it something [that you could go and see your GP and they might not be able to diagnose it]? (Gabby Logan, BBC Radio 5) f. Every so often, sport throws up a genius [that you can’t believe how good they are] (Barry Hearne, Talksport Radio) g. How do you go about planning in an area [where you don’t know what you’re going to find there]? (Gabby Logan, BBC Radio 5) h. It’s one of those moves [where you never quite know how it’s gonna work out] (Jamie Redknapp, Sky Sports TV) i. You’re gonna get some agents [that they’re just out to screw as much money as possible out of clubs] (Barry Silk, BBC Radio 5)
The kind interpretation is explicit in many of the above cases (e.g. where the antecedent contains ‘kind/sort/type’ as in 15a–15c), and implicit in the other
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cases (e.g. someone in 15d means ‘the kind of person’, something in 15e means ‘the kind of thing’, a genius/area in 15f, 15g means means ‘the kind of genius/ area’, one of those moves in 15h means ‘the kind of move’, and some agents in 15i means ‘the kind of agents’). By contrast, my data do not contain clear examples of resumptives (like that underlined below) used in place of gaps in restrictive clauses like the following: (16)
The police have now charged the suspect [who/that they arrested ―/*him earlier today]
Moreover, none of the resumptive relatives in my data involves a quantified antecedent headed by a quantifier like no/each/every – e.g. there are no sentences such as the following with a resumptive used in place of the gap: (17)
a. There was nobody [that he could confide in ―/*him] b. She politely declined each/every request [that he made―/*it]
These two observations can be related if the gap in restrictives has a bound variable interpretation, but resumptives are interpreted as bound pronouns, not as bound variables.8 8
My data contain 18 potential cases of the use of a resumptive in bracketed relative clauses which are clearly not appositive and might be thought not to be kind relatives either. One such class of cases relates to sentence like: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv)
My sporting heroes are these people [who, they confront defeat] (John Rawling, BBC Radio 5) It’s really a question of monitoring those species [that, if they do well, all the other species do well] (Fisheries spokesman, BBC Radio 5) Newcastle and Spurs in particular are the two clubs [that he knows the club] (Jason Cundy, Talksport Radio) We’re the only club in England [that we’re in all four competitions] (Listener, Talksport Radio)
Here, the antecedent is a definite DP (these people/those species/the two clubs/the only club), so at first sight it might seem as if the bracketed relative clauses are restrictive. Nonetheless, I think the DP in such cases has a kind interpretation, e.g. these people in (i) is paraphrasable as ‘the kind of people’. A second class of potential counterexamples concerns sentences like the following: (v) (vi)
It’s the story of a woman [who, actually, her parents, she goes to rescue them] (Bishop Steven Lowe, BBC Radio 5) Now they’ve gone back to a manager [who lots of players played under him in his previous spell there] (Simon Johnson, Talksport Radio)
Here (as in many kind relatives), the antecedents contain an indefinite article (a woman/a manager) but appear to refer to a specific woman/manager, and so the bracketed clauses might be claimed to be restrictive (though it seems to me that this is not clearcut). A third class of potential counterexamples is represented by sentences such as those below:
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66 Resumptive Relatives Overall, existing research has suggested that resumptives are limited to occurring in appositive and kind relatives (and do not occur in restrictives) and in addition they are limited to relativising constituents which are inaccessible for syntactic or processing reasons. They do not involve movement (in English, at least) but rather involve an in situ relativiser merged on the periphery of the relative clause and an associated in situ resumptive merged internally within the relative clause. Experimental evidence suggests that resumptive relatives are typically judged as less than fully acceptable, but that they speed up the processing of difficult dependencies. In the remainder of this chapter, I will look in detail at the resumptive relatives found in my data on colloquial English. I will explore the extent to which they shed light on two key questions raised in the existing research literature. The first of these (to be explored in §2.3 below) relates to the distribution of resumptive relatives, and more specifically to the question of whether they are only used to relativise inaccessible positions (e.g. positions inside syntactic islands, or positions that give rise to processing problems because they create long-distance dependencies). The second question relates to the derivation of resumptive relatives, and the syntax of the relativiser on the one hand (to be explored in §2.4) and that of the resumptive on the other (to be explored for pronominal resumptives in §2.5, and for nominal resumptives in §2.6). As noted in §2.1, the data I use will largely come from my own collection of examples from live, unscripted broadcasts, together with some from internet sources. I will also make occasional use of the corpus of resumptive relatives collected by Tony Kroch. The two sets of data complement each other nicely in that the Kroch data is largely from US English, and mine largely from UK English (albeit both show essentially the same range of structures).
2.3
Inaccessibility Hypothesis
In this section, I explore the hypothesis that resumptives are used to relativise constituents which are inaccessible to gap-creating movement operations for syntactic or processing reasons. More concretely, I will use my broadcast (vii)
It’s John Terry and Frank Lampard [that everyone’s getting on their backs] (Listener, BBC Radio 5) (viii) That’s [what he got a knighthood for it] (Darren Gough, Talksport Radio) (ix) That’s [what both coaches have been endeavouring to do so for the last 15 minutes of the game] (commentator, Talksport Radio) The first of these is a cleft structure rather than a pure relative, while the other two are free relatives. I leave open the question of how best to deal with such cases.
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English data to test the following hypothesis about the use of resumptives in relative clauses in English: (18)
Inaccessibility Hypothesis Resumptives relativise inaccessible constituents
(Inaccessible constituents are those which are difficult to relativise with a gap relative because this would give rise to syntactic or processing difficulties).9 The hypothesis in (18) dates back in spirit to seminal typological work on relativisation by Keenan and Comrie, who (1977: 92) note that ‘the tendency to present pronouns in positions relativised’ (i.e. the tendency to use resumptive pronouns) will ‘increase as we descend the AH’, where AH is the following hierarchy: (19)
Accessibility Hierarchy/AH SU > DO > IO > OBL > GEN > OCOMP (Keenan & Comrie 1977: 66)
Here, > means ‘is more accessible than’, SU stands for ‘subject’, DO for ‘direct object’, IO for ‘indirect object’, OBL for ‘oblique argument’, and OCOMP for ‘object of comparison’. This claim is reiterated in much subsequent work, including Keenan & Comrie (1979), Keenan (1985: 155–6), Comrie (1989: 140–1, 147; 1999: 89), Hawkins (1999: 265) and Herrmann (2003: 127–67). In this section, I use my data to evaluate the Inaccessibility Hypothesis (18). I begin by looking at the question of whether one of the functions of resumptives is to permit relativisation of constituents which are inaccessible to gap-creating movement operations because any such movement would violate (one or more) constraints on movement. As we will see in this section, there are a considerable number of cases in my data where use of a resumptive potentially serves to obviate/repair a constraint violation. The largest number of these involve structures in which a resumptive is used to relativise an inaccessible subject. By way of background information, I note 9
I do not generalise this beyond English here, since there are other types of resumptive in some languages which can be used to relativise accessible (but not inaccessible, e.g. island-internal) positions, as with resumptive clitics in relative clauses in Slavic languages (Hladnik 2015). One could generalise the Inaccessibility Hypothesis to include gaps, e.g. along the following lines: Relative clauses where the head is highly accessible when the relativized position is processed take gaps, whereas relative clauses which maintain a relatively low degree of accessibility of the head when the relativized position is processed take resumptive pronouns. (Ariel 1999: 217) However, since my concern here is with resumptive relatives, I will have little to say about gap relatives (and the data I collected were on non-canonical relatives, not canonical gap relatives).
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68 Resumptive Relatives that Rizzi and Shlonsky (2007) and Rizzi (2014a) have drawn a distinction between defective clauses (which have a reduced or truncated peripheral structure and project only as far as FINP) and non-defective (or, as I will term them, complete) clauses which contain a full periphery which includes FORCEP. Complete clauses can be introduced by an overt (force-marking) complementiser or subordinating conjunction, and can contain a wide range of other peripheral projections including TOPP, FOCP, INTP, WHP, MODP and so on; by contrast, defective clauses have a reduced periphery which comprises FINP and can also contain one or more optional MODP constituents. As the comparison below illustrates, the subject of a defective clause like that in (20a) below is accessible to a (gap-creating) movement operation like Wh-Movement, whereas the subject of a complete clause like that in (20b) is not: (20)
a. Who do you think [― is lying]? b. *Who do you think [that ― is lying]?
On one view, this is because (prior to undergoing Wh-Movement), the who subject in the complete clause bracketed in (20b) occupies the criterial position for a subject (spec-SUBJP under cartographic analyses), and thus is frozen in place in consequence of a constraint which was given the following formulation in §1.4: (21)
Criterial Freezing Condition/CFC A constituent occupying its criterial position is frozen in place
By contrast, if defective clauses lack (or have a defective) SUBJP, nothing will prevent who from being extracted out of the defective clause in (20a).10 Given this background, it is interesting to note that my data contain 31 structures like the following where an (underlined) resumptive is used to relativise the subject of a [bracketed] complete clause containing a (bold-printed) complementiser, subordinating conjunction or inverted auxiliary: (22)
10
a. And on comes Jermaine Beckford, who Leeds United fans will remember [that he scored twice against Tottenham] (Connor MacNamara, BBC Radio 5) b. I hope he doesn’t have to make a decision which we’ll all debate [whether it was wrong or right] (Mark Lawrenson, BBC Radio 5) c. She has a gash on her leg, which they’re not sure [if it’s going to heal over] (Rob Johnson, Radio 5)
See Radford (2018: 32–9) for a more detailed technical account of how the subject of a defective clause can be extracted.
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d. It’s really a question of monitoring those species that [if they do well] all the other species do well (Fisheries spokesman, BBC Radio 5) e. Should they commit that amount of money on a player [who, can he guarantee to keep you up?] (Adrian Durham, Talksport Radio)
If (as widely assumed) force-marking complementisers, conjunctions and inverted auxiliaries can only occur in complete clauses, sentences like (22) are cases where a resumptive is used to relativise a frozen subject (i.e. one which is inaccessible to movement by virtue of being frozen in place by CFC). Consequently, the resumptive cannot be replaced by a gap and in effect omitted in such cases.11 My data also contain 38 structures like those below in which an (underlined) resumptive is used to relativise the subject of a [bracketed] clause which is introduced by an (italicised) interrogative wh-constituent: (23)
a. Gallas was covering his goalkeeper, who we’re not quite sure [what he was doing] (Gareth Southgate, ITV1) b. You’re gonna release players that you’re not sure [how much training they’re gonna do] (Clive Tyldesley, ITV4) c. Every so often, sport throws up a genius that you can’t believe [how good they are] (Barry Hearne, Talksport Radio) d. He’s trying out players that he wants to see [how they perform on the big stage] (Gabby Logan, BBC Radio 5) e. There’s a good metre and a half there that you have no idea [where it really is] (Martin Brundle, BBC1 TV) f. Now there’s talk of Celtic looking for another buyer, which I don’t know [when that’s gonna come] (Listener, Talksport Radio) g. Maradona has put a couple of people in the squad that most people can’t work out [why they’re there] (Alan Curbishley, Talksport Radio)
Since only complete clauses can contain a peripheral interrogative whconstituent, sentences like (23) are further cases where a resumptive is used to relativise the subject of a complete clause which is frozen in place by CFC
11
A more traditional account of the ungrammaticality which comes from using a gap in place of the resumptive in sentences like (22) is that it violates the COMP-trace filter of Chomsky & Lasnik (1977), which filters out superficial structures in which a complementiser is immediately followed by a trace. For a range of views on the nature of the COMP-trace effect, see Perlmutter (1968, 1971), Chomsky & Lasnik (1977), Pesetsky (1982), Sobin (1987, 2002, 2009), Browning (1996), Szczegielniak (1999), Roussou (2000), Pesetsky & Torrego (2001, 2004), Ackema & Neeleman (2003), Kandybowicz (2006), Lohndal (2009), Ackema (2010), Ha (2010), Llinàs-Grau & Fernández Sánchez (2013), Sato & Dobashi (2013), Erlewine (2014, 2017), Bošković (2016), Pesetsky (2016), Sobin (2016), and Douglas (2017).
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70 Resumptive Relatives and thus inaccessible to gap movement: consequently, replacing the resumptive by a gap in such cases results in ungrammaticality. In addition, my data also contain five examples like those below in which a resumptive is used to relativise the subject of a [bracketed] relative clause which cannot be relativised by a gap (as we see from the ungrammaticality which results if the resumptive is omitted): (24)
a. Klinsmann is someone that how can you argue with [what he did as a footballer?] (Sean Wheelock, BBC Radio 5) b. The name that sticks out for me is Lee Clark, the former Huddersfield Town manager, who the eyebrows were raised [when he lost that job in the first place (Colin Murray, BBC Radio 5) c. We keep talking about Cesc Fabregas, who we all love the way [he plays] (Gareth Southgate, ITV)
Given the assumption that finite relative clauses are complete clauses (containing a peripheral projection housing a relative pronoun; e.g. a null counterpart of how in 24c), structures like (24) are further cases where a frozen subject is relativised by use of a resumptive.12 Furthermore, my data also contain four examples like those below, where a resumptive is used to relativise the subject of a bracketed relative clause containing an italicised fronted focused constituent in (25a), a fronted exclamative wh-constituent in (25b), and a dislocated topic in (25c, 25d). In each case, the sentence is ungrammatical if the resumptive is replaced by a gap (i.e. omitted): (25)
a. Martin was one of those people [who, everything on the football side, he was responsible for] (Graham Taylor, BBC Radio 5) b. They need to be solid at the back against a Spanish team [that what a goal they scored!] (Ray Parlour, Talksport Radio) c. It’s the story of a woman [who, actually, her parents, she goes to rescue them] (Bishop Steven Lowe, BBC Radio 5) d. There are some people [who, compromising in his way, they are not happy about it] (Liberal Democrat blogger, BBC Radio 5)
Given the assumption that only complete clauses can contain a peripheral focused, exclamative or topic projection, it follows that sentences like (25)
12
A more traditional account of the ungrammaticality which would result from using a gap in sentences like (23, 24) is in terms of the Empty Category Principle/ECP, since it would result in a structure where an empty category (namely, the gap left behind by movement of the subject) is not properly governed. On ECP, see Chomsky (1981, 1986), Kayne (1984), Rizzi (1990), Lasnik & Saito (1992), and (for a critical perspective) Culicover (1992, 1993).
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are further cases where a frozen subject is relativised by use of a resumptive. Overall, my data contain 78 cases where resumptives are used to relativise frozen subjects of complete clauses – 31 like (22), 38 like (23), 5 like (24) and 4 like (25): for conciseness, I shall refer to these as frozen subject cases. Additionally, my data also contain nine examples like those below in which the subject of a [bracketed] zero-relative clause is relativised by a resumptive: (26)
a. He’s one of those players [ø he likes to feel bat on ball] (David Lloyd, Sky Sports TV) b. He’s a guy [ø he’s got an incredible knowledge of the game] (Steve Smith, Talksport Radio) c. Dimitar Berbatov, he’s the kind of player [ø he scores those fancy lobs] (Connor MacNamara, BBC Radio 5) d. Then they went and signed Greg Halford, who’s another player [ø he’s had premiership experience] (Steve Claridge, BBC Radio 5)
In such cases, use of a gap in place of the resumptive results in a so-called subject contact relative clause structure which is ungrammatical for most speakers (and has a dialectal feel to me). For speakers like me who don’t allow the italicised resumptive to be omitted here, use of the resumptive serves to obviate whatever constraint violation rules out contact relatives in such sentences in their grammars (on which, see Erdmann 1980, Harris & Vincent 1980, Weisler 1980, Napoli 1982, Lambrecht 1988, Rizzi 1990, Henry 1995, den Dikken 2005, Sistrunk 2012, and Haegeman et al. 2015). If (as claimed by Doherty 1993, 1994) subject contact relatives have a reduced periphery, they cannot be treated as complete clauses with frozen subject. A different kind of case where resumptives can be argued to obviate/repair constraint violations involves a constraint on gap movement operations (dating back to work by Cattell 1976, Cinque 1978 and Huang 1982) which is given the following informal characterisation in Radford (2016: 369):13 (27)
13
Constraint on Extraction Domains/CED Extraction is only possible out of a complement, not out of a specifier or adjunct
For a range of empirical, theoretical and experimental perspectives on CED, see Nunes & Uriagereka (2000), Sabel (2002), Rackowski & Richards (2005), Stepanov (2001, 2007), Jurka (2010), Müller (2010), Jurka, Nakao & Omaki (2011), Chaves (2012, 2013), Sheehan (2013a, 2013b).
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72 Resumptive Relatives In this connection, I note that my data contain 23 cases like those below where a resumptive is used to relativise a constituent which is rendered inaccessible to gap movement by CED:14 (28)
a. He’s willing to give it a go for Robbie di Matteo, who [behind him] there is Steve Appleton (Commentator, BBC1 TV) b. Are they resuming activities which, [if they go wrong], we end up footing the bill? (Politician, BBC Radio 5) c. He sent me a few stickers, which, [most of them] I’ve got, unfortunately (Darren Gough, Talksport Radio) d. I saw the penalty and he was outside the box, which [how the referee gave it], I don’t know (Paul Lambert, Sky Sports TV) e. England have only picked four bowlers for this match, which [two of them] are inexperienced (Geoff Boycott, BBC Radio 5) f. Chelsea have a group of players that [some of them] are world-class players (Graeme Souness, Sky Sports TV) g. This information is asked for on the census form, which they threaten to fine you up to a thousand pounds [if you don’t fill the thing in] (Civil Liberty spokesman, BBC Radio 5) h. Were there managers that you left the club [because you didn’t get on with the manager]? (Andy Goldstein, Talksport Radio)
Thus, the resumptive is inside a bracketed peripheral phrase/clause which occupies the specifier position in a modifier phrase in (28a, 28b), the specifier position in a focus phrase in (28c, 28d), and the specifier/subject in a TP or SUBJP projection in (28e, 28f). In addition, a resumptive nominal is used to relativise a constituent inside an adjunct clause in (28g, 28h). In each of these cases, use of a gap in place of the underlined resumptive would result in a CED
14
In order to avoid double-counting of examples, I have excluded from my count of CED cases structures which are treated here as violating other constraints. For example, cases like: (i) Are they resuming activities which, [if they go wrong], we end up footing the bill? (Politician, BBC Radio 5) were counted in the discussion of the examples in (22) as instances where a resumptive is used to relativise a frozen subject, so I have not included them in the count of CED violations as well. For the purpose of calculating what proportion of resumptives potentially serve a constraint obviation function, it does not particularly matter which constraint a given example is treated as violating: what is crucial is to avoid double-counting (which would artificially inflate the number of constraint-obviating resumptive clauses). There are a number of other examples where replacing a resumptive by a gap would result in violation of more than one constraint: for example, (28d) violates not only CED but also the Freezing Principle of Wexler and Culicover (1980: 119), which freezes the elements of a moved constituent in place and so bars which from being extracted out of the bracketed fronted wh-clause. In such cases, I have listed each example under only one constraint, to avoid double-counting.
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violation, so use of the resumptive could be taken as a way of avoiding any such violation. In addition, my data contain 13 examples where a resumptive is used to avoid a locality violation. These include seven cases like (29a, 29b) below where the resumptive relativises an object inside a [bracketed] wh-question, one like (29c) involving an object inside a yes-no question, and five like (29d, 29e) involving an object inside a relative clause: (29)
a. You can’t have a loon in goal – you know, someone that you don’t know [what you’re gonna get from him] (Ben Foster, BBC Radio 5) b. At the moment, they’re left with a really good goalkeeper and Gerard, who they’re not sure [how to play him] (David Pleat, BBC Radio 5) c. And now it’s a corner, [which can they get one in the back of the net?] (Nigel Spackman, Channel 5 TV) d. The issue of child abuse is one of the things that people are objecting to the way [the church has handled it] (Vatican spokesman, BBC Radio 5) e. They always come to a crunching end with a name that there’s no way [you’re gonna work it in] (Colin Murray, BBC Radio 5)
Using a gap in place of the resumptive in such cases would give rise to a locality violation, in that an (overt or null) wh-relativiser would have to move directly out of a clause introduced by an (overt or null) wh-interrogative, yes-no interrogative or relative operator, from a position below the operator. This would give rise to violation of locality conditions like the Subjacency Condition of Chomsky (1973) and Rizzi (1982), the Barrierhood Condition of Chomsky (1986), the Relativised Minimality Condition of Rizzi (1990, 2003), the Phase Impenetrability Condition of Chomsky (1998), and the Intervention Condition of Starke (2001), Rizzi (2004b), Endo (2007), and Haegeman (2012). For classificatory purposes, I shall suppose that use of a gap in such structure would induce an intervention violation. A rather different kind of violation arises in cases like those below where an (underlined) resumptive is used to relativise an object inside a direct speech quotation, as below (six instances of which occurred in my data): (30)
a. He dove at a ball that I said to myself: ‘He can’t get to that ball’ (Harry Keough, Talksport Radio) b. It was one of them you think: ‘No, don’t hit it, son!’ (Tony Cascarino, Talksport Radio) c. Was there a particular area of your squad that you thought: ‘I need to strengthen this in order to do well in the Premier League’? (Andy Goldstein, Talksport Radio) d. They’ve got a transfer committee that people say: ‘Well, why should you have a transfer committee?’ (John McGovern, BBC Radio 5)
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74 Resumptive Relatives Since direct speech quotations are autonomous speech domains, no gap movement operation will be able to extract any constituent out of them – hence the ungrammaticality which results if the underlined resumptive is replaced by a gap. For classificatory purposes, I shall refer to these as quotative island cases. A further class of cases where resumptives can be argued to serve a repair function involves structures like those below in which an (underlined) resumptive is used to relativise the object of an (italicised) unstrandable preposition/particle: (31)
a. He whacked it past the goalkeeper, who probably Sean Derry’s wife could do a better job in goal than this guy (Ian Abrahams, Talksport Radio) b. This is a shirt that there’s not too many heavier than a Liverpool shirt (Brendan Rogers, Talksport Radio) c. We need to think about how we deal with prisoners, who we must try to get more of them to go straight when they come out (Ken Clarke, BBC Radio 5) d. Naturally aggressive players, which Dhoni is one of those, can’t restrain themselves (Michael Vaughan, BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra) e. A lot of companies contacted this week said they are low on stock and due to the amount we need they can’t install until after Xmas, which we can’t wait until then (email which Peter Trudgill pers. comm. reports being sent by his property management agent) f. He’s the one ø they haven’t quite been the same without him (Andy Gray, Sky Sports TV)
Examples (31a, 31b) involve a resumptive used to relativise the object of the comparative particle than, and since OCOMP (object of comparison) is the lowest position on the Keenan-Comrie Accessibility Hierarchy (19), we should expect such constituents to be inaccessible to gap movement. Examples (31c, 31d) involve a resumptive used to relativise the complement of partitive of, which is claimed to be resistant to stranding by Jespersen (1949: 188) and Huddleston & Pullum (2002: 1041). Example (31e) involves relativisation of the object of a preposition (until/without) which is resistant to stranding, perhaps because it introduces an adjunct phrase, and extraction out of adjuncts is barred by the Constraint on Extraction Domains (27). My data contain 16 examples of a resumptive used to relativise the object of an unstrandable preposition/particle, 12 of which involve partitive of. For classificatory purposes, I shall refer to these as preposition stranding cases. While the main cases where resumptives are used to obviate constraint violations are listed above, for the sake of completeness, I note that my data
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also contain ten other cases like those below where an (underlined) resumptive occurs in a context where a gap could not be used: (32)
a. Dirk Kuyt got a hat-trick, which he won’t get an easier hat-trick (Graham Souness, Sky Sports TV) b. No one wants to carry someone whereby you do all the work and they look good (prowess.org.uk) c. He’s the one that Arsène Wenger needs to try and see if he can find him a little bit of space (Andy Townsend, ITV)
Use of a gap in place of the resumptive would involve illicit extraction of a noun without its (italicised) premodifiers in (32a), of the subject of a coordinate clause in (32b) and of the first object in a double object construction in (32c). Since there are so few of these, I will say no more about them. Thus far in this section, I have discussed cases in which resumptives are used in contexts where syntactic constraints rule out the use of gaps. At the same time, however, it should be acknowledged that my data also contain relative clauses like those bracketed below where resumptives are used in gap contexts (i.e. in contexts where gaps are admissible): (33)
a. He’s one of those players [that he knows where the back of the net is] (Paul Sarahs, BBC Radio 5) b. Supermarkets are now making a big thing about selling wonky vegetables, [which years ago they would just have been discarded] (Sean Farrington, BBC Radio 5) c. There is a young referee working his way up, [who I actually think he’s alright] (Mark Chapman, BBC Radio 5). d. They’ve sent a statement through by the way, [which I’ll read it in a minute or two] (Stephen Nolan, BBC Radio 5) e. This is something [that I’m sure players would support it] (Listener, BBC Radio 5) f. He presses the ball, [which we said earlier the Swiss have done that really well] (Gareth Southgate, ITV) g. We need players [who we can count on them in a crisis] (Glenn Hoddle, ITV) h. He’s one player [that I’m really pleased for him] (Martin Keown, BBC Radio 5) i. As a manager of a team, you’ve gotta set a structure [that you have confidence in the structure] (Stuart Pearce, Talksport Radio) j. Chris Thompson ran 13.34, [which I think he’ll be a little bit disappointed with that] (Steve Cram, BBC2 TV; 13.34 = 13 minutes 34 seconds)
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76 Resumptive Relatives As these examples illustrate, resumptives can be used in gap contexts to relativise (local and non-local) subjects, verbal objects and prepositional objects. The table in (34) shows the number of cases where resumptives are used in relative clauses in contexts in which use of a gap would (or would not) be ruled out by syntactic constraints:15 15
I excluded structures like the following from the count, on the grounds that they are problematic to classify in terms of whether or not the resumptives occur in contexts where use of gaps would be ruled out by syntactic constraints: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi)
And then there’s the likes of Iaquinta, who I don’t think his form justified inclusion (Andy Brassell, BBC Radio 5) He’s the senior professional at Gleneagles, which I’m sure a lot of you have been there (John Inverdale, BBC Radio 5) Gareth Bale is one of those players where you know he will change the game (Statman Dave, FullTimeDEVILS podcast) It was a club whereby I thought potentially it had so much going for it . . . (michaelknighton.co.uk) You were taking a chance on players ø you weren’t too sure would they settle in this country (James Pearce, Talksport Radio) I met someone who, we just clicked (Sex therapist, BBC Radio 5)
In the case of genitive resumptives like (i), the problem is that while a gap structure like (vii) below is ungrammatical by virtue of violating the Left Branch Condition (Ross 1967; Corver 1990, 1992; Bošković 2005, 2008), a gap structure like (viii) is fine: (vii) *And then there’s . . . Iaquinta, whose I don’t think – form justified inclusion (viii) And then there’s . . . Iaquinta, whose form I don’t think – justified inclusion In the case of adverbial resumptives like that underlined in (ii), the problem is that while a gap structure like (ix) below is ungrammatical, a gap structure like (x) is fine (where the preposition which there serves as the complement of is spelled out overtly): (ix) (x)
*He’s . . . at Gleneagles, which I’m sure a lot of you have been ― He’s . . . at Gleneagles, which I’m sure a lot of you have been to ―
In the case of sentences like (iii) and (iv) that potentially involve use of where/whereby as a kind complementiser, this type of structure is not native to my variety of English and I am therefore not qualified to pass judgement on whether the resumptive can be replaced by a gap in such cases. In the case of (v), it is certainly the case that the resumptive can be replaced by a gap, but the key question is whether the gap is located after would (which would give rise to a frozen subject violation) or before it (which would not). Finally, in (vi), it is certainly possible to have a gap in place of resumptive we, as we see below: (xi)
I met someone who ― just clicked
But the problem is that (xi) has a different interpretation from (vi): whereas the resumptive structure (vi) has a meaning paraphrasable as ‘I met someone of such a kind that the person concerned and I just clicked’, the gap structure (xi) has an (odd) meaning paraphrasable as ‘I met someone such that the person concerned just clicked’.
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Resumptives used in relatives where gaps are/aren’t ruled out by constraints
Constraint that would be violated if the resumptive were replaced by a gap
No.
Frozen Subject Constraint (illustrated in 22–25)
78
21.4
9
2.5
Constraint on Extraction Domains (illustrated in 28)
23
6.3
Intervention Constraint (illustrated in 29)
13
3.6
6
1.6
Preposition Stranding Constraint (illustrated in 31)
16
4.4
Other constraints (illustrated in 32)
10
2.7
209
57.4
Contact Relative Constraint (illustrated in 26)
Quotative Island Constraint (illustrated in 30)
No constraint violation (illustrated in 33)
%
Overall, of the 364 resumptives included in the count, 155 (42.6%) occurred in contexts rendered inaccessible to gaps by syntactic constraints (as expected under the Inaccessibility Hypothesis/IH). However, 209 (57.4%) occurred in contexts where a gap could freely have been used without giving rise to any constraint violation (contrary to what IH would lead us to expect). The figures in (34) suggest that (in my data) resumptives can be used to relativise any type of constituent, irrespective of whether or not the relativised constituent occurs in a context where it would be rendered inaccessible to gap-creating movement operations by syntactic constraints. Thus, my data seem to undermine the Inaccessibility Hypothesis. Moreover, the hypothesis is further undermined by the observation that the claim that the resumptives in sentences like (22–32) occur in structures where gaps are supposedly ruled out by syntactic constraints is undermined by sentences like those below in which gaps occur in the relevant contexts. For example, the claim made earlier that resumptives are used in sentences like (22) because use of a gap after a complementiser/conjunction is ruled out because the subject of a complete clause is frozen in place is called into question by sentences such as the following: (35)
a. What it seems that ― happened is that there was a break in play (Tim Vickery, BBC Radio 5) b. I probably played under 25 managers, which I’m not sure whether ― is a good thing (Danny Mills, BBC Radio 5) c. Chamak it looks as if ― will be joining West Ham (Jason Cundy, Talksport Radio)
Similarly, the claim that resumptives are used in sentences like (28) because gap movement out of a specifier or adjunct is ruled out by the Constraint on
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78 Resumptive Relatives Extraction Domains/CED (27) is called into question by the occurrence of gaps inside [bracketed] adverbial clauses in sentences like: (36)
a. They’ve got a game in hand, which [if they won ―], they’d be about sixth (Ian Danter, Talksport radio) b. I’m gonna go for one which, [if I didn’t go to ―], my wife would absolutely kill me (Martin Kellner, BBC Radio 5) c. Which sportsman, [if you were stuck inside a jury room with ―], would you hope for the trial to be abandoned? (Colin Murray, BBC Radio 5) d. What would it be great [if she found ―]? (Dan Snow, BBC1 TV) e. You’re the kind of act you feel good [after seeing ―] (Simon Cowell, ITV)
In (36a–36c), an (italicised) relative or interrogative wh-constituent is extracted out of a [bracketed] peripheral adverbial clause: if the adverbial clause occupies the specifier position in a peripheral projection like MODP, the resulting gap movement should be ruled out by CED – and yet this kind of structure is found in everyday language.16 In (36d, 36e), the adverbial clauses are adjuncts, so again use of a gap should be ruled out by CED but is not. In much the same way, the claim that the use of resumptives in sentences like (29) arises because use of a gap in such cases would be ruled out by a locality (e.g. intervention) constraint is called into question by the occurrence of gaps in sentences such as the following: (37)
a. He doesn’t get on with the players that you know [what you’re gonna get from ― every week] (Steve Claridge, BBC Radio 5) b. It’s a vote that nobody knows [exactly what’s happened with ―] (Darren Fletcher, BBC Radio 5) c. He picked up a jiffy bag that he was unaware of [what was in ―] (Adrian Clarke, Talksport Radio) d. J’ai un beau col roulé blanc (= ‘I have a nice white roll-neck sweater’), which I was wondering [what I was gonna do with ―] (me, in conversation with my French-speaking wife) e. One of the places I could never understand [why people stopped at ―] was Little Chef (Jeremy Clarkson, BBC2 TV)
In each of these cases, a null relative pronoun is moved from the gap position to the front of the relative clause across an intervening (italicised) interrogative operator, even though this type of movement would be expected to be ruled out by locality requirements. 16
Memo Cinque (pers. comm.) suggests that in sentences like (36a–36c), the wh-constituent may move to the edge of the if-clause rather than being extracted out of it. I am sceptical about this, because the wh-constituent must move to its criterial position (e.g. spec-RELP in 36a/36b, and spec-FOCP in 36c), while the if-clause must occupy its own criterial position in spec-MODP.
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Likewise, the claim that comparative than does not allow gap-movement of its complement (and hence that the resumptive serves a constraint obviation function in resumptive comparatives like 31a, 31b) is called into question by sentences such as the following, where than is stranded by a gap movement operation moving an (italicised) relativised constituent to the front of the bracketed relative clauses in (38a–38c), and moving a questioned/topicalised constituent to the front of the overall sentence in (38d, 38e): (38)
a. I think I’ve probably got a couple of people in front of me [which I might be quicker than ―] (Lewis Hamilton, BBC1 TV) b. He’s played against teams [who Liverpool have been better than ―] (Jamie Carragher, Sky Sports TV) c. He’s the only Ducati [that Valentino’s faster than ―] (Matt Smith, BBC2 TV) d. What other countries are we more important than ―? (Nicky Campbell, BBC Radio 5) e. The location, you couldn’t get much better than ― really (Interviewee, Channel 4 TV)
Likewise, the claim that resumptives which serve as the complement of partitive of in sentences like (31c, 31d) are used to obviate a stranding constraint is called into question in sentences like those below: (39)
a. He wasn’t allowed to take free kicks and corners, [which he took most of ― last year] (Andy Gray, Talksport Radio) b. Sleep is definitely something [we didn’t get much of ―] (Interviewee, BBC Radio 5) c. That’s [what he’s got to do more of ―] (Alan Shearer, BBC1 TV) d. So I also looked all over the internet for cleanup applications . . . [which I couldn’t find any of ―] (discussions.apple.com) e. That’s [what unfortunately Sterling doesn’t do enough of ―] (Ian Wright, ITV) f. Our waiter specifically said it included cod, [which we found none of ―] (yelp.com) g. It was another defensive display, [which we’ve seen lots of ― with Mourinho at Manchester United] (Darren Gough, Talksport Radio) h. He wasn’t talking about the long ball, [which we’ve seen one or two of ― wasted by Tottenham] (Martin Tyler, Sky Sports TV)
In each of these cases, partitive of is stranded by gap movement of an (overt or null) relativiser to the front of the bracketed relative clause. To summarise: the table in (34) claims that 155/364 resumptives in my data (42.6%) occurred in contexts supposedly rendered inaccessible to gap movement operations by syntactic constraints. And yet data like those in (35–39) above show that some speakers allow the use of gaps in (at least some of) these
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80 Resumptive Relatives contexts, thereby further undermining the Inaccessibility Hypothesis. Even if we were to weaken the hypothesis by positing that in structures violating relatively soft constraints either a gap or a resumptive can be used, we are nonetheless left with the damning figure that 209/364 resumptives in my data (57.4%) occurred in contexts freely accessible to gap-movement operations – a figure which seriously undermines the hypothesis. Still, this conclusion could be claimed to be a hasty one, since (as noted earlier) constituents can be inaccessible to gap movement operations not only if they give rise to violation of syntactic constraints, but also if they give rise to processing difficulties by virtue of creating long-distance dependencies. So far, I have only shown that use of resumptives is not restricted to contexts where use of a gap would be ruled out by syntactic constraints. The question that remains to be asked, therefore, is whether there is any evidence in my data that a relatively long string of constituents intervening between relativiser and gap causes processing problems which can be alleviated by using a resumptive in place of the gap, to refresh the dependency. Recall that Erteshik-Shir (1992) illustrates this effect in terms of the following contrasts (repeated from 11 above): (40)
a. b. c. d.
This is the girl that John likes ―/*her This is the girl that Peter said that John likes ―/??her This is the girl that Peter said that John thinks that Paul likes ―/?her This is the girl that Peter said that John thinks that yesterday his mother had given some cakes to ?―/her.
If there were a length effect, we should expect resumptives to be restricted to occurring in structures where there is a long string intervening between relativiser and resumptive (where a long string might be taken to be one of seven words or more as in research on complementiser doubling by Staum Casasanto & Sag 2008b). In order to test for the possibility of a length effect, I calculated the intervening string length/ISL for each of the resumptive relative examples in my data (i.e. the number of overt words intervening between relativiser and resumptive). As a brief illustration of the counting procedure which I employed, consider the following: (41)
a. There was a lack of confidence in the organising committee, which it’s still there underneath the surface (Gordon Farquar, BBC Radio 5) b. He’s a player who, you know, he was captain of the youth side (Simon Brotherton, BBC Radio 5) c. We keep talking about Cesc Fabregas, who we all love the way he plays (Gareth Southgate, ITV) d. They call the OPA, which I’m sorry I don’t know what it stands for (US tourism spokesman, BBC Radio 5)
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In (41a), the (underlined) resumptive it is immediately adjacent to the (italicised) relativiser which, so the ISL (i.e. the number of overt words intervening between the two) is 0. In (41b), there is a string of two overt words (you know) intervening between he and who, so the ISL is 2. In (41c), there is a string of 5 overt words (we all love the way) intervening between it and which, so the ISL is 5. And in (41d), there is a string of 8 overt words (I’m sorry I don’t know what) intervening between it and which, yielding an ISL of 8, if contracted forms like I’m and don’t are counted as comprising two words each. After excluding a small number of indeterminate cases, there were 420 resumptive relatives included in this count.17 The number and percentage of examples with a given intervening string length is as shown in the table below: (42)
Number and percentage of resumptive relative clauses with a given ISL
ISL
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
No.
78
21
37
42
45
55
40
37
24
15
9
7
10
18.6
5.0
8.8 10.0 10.7 13.1
9.5
8.8
5.7
3.6
2.1
1.7
2.4
%
11 >11
These figures should be read as follows. 78/420 examples (18.6%) had an ISL of 0 – in other words, there was no overt word intervening between relativiser and resumptive; 21/420 examples (5.0%) had an ISL of 1 (i.e. had one word intervening between relativiser and resumptive); 37/420 (8.8%) had an ISL of 2 (i.e. had two words intervening between relativiser and resumptive) . . . and so on. The mean ISL for all 420 examples was 4.2, and in 318/420 cases (75.7%) 17
As noted in the previous paragraph, I computed the length of an intervening string in terms of the number of overt words it contains, although I acknowledge that (as pointed out by Stephen Crain pers. comm.), this is less satisfactory than computing length in terms of the number of syllables, segments, or seconds. I have counted contracted forms like it’s/I’m/we’re and gonna/gotta/ wanna as two words. I acknowledge that a simple word count is a very crude measure of potential processing problems, since (for example) it does not take into account intervening null constituents, or structural complexity. I excluded a small number of structures like the following from my count: There is a valuation which, if it’s reached, all of a sudden it triggers ‘You can go’ (Sam Matterface, Talksport Radio) (ii) We’re gonna see the players who, can they do it, can’t they do it, we’ll have to wait and see (Graham Taylor, BBC Radio 5). (iii) I had two efforts in the first half, which one hit the post and one went wide (David Edwards, BBC Radio 5) (iv) Prime ministers have to make decisions that some are public, some are not (Tony Livesey, BBC Radio 5) (i)
The problem posed by such sentences is to determine which of the two underlined pronouns is resumptive (the first, the second, or both?), and hence which should be scored.
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82 Resumptive Relatives the ISL was below the threshold figure of 7 taken by Staum Casasanto and Sag to be indicative of a length effect. Thus, the figures in (42) appear to show no clear evidence of any length effect. The overall conclusion which the data presented in this section lead to is that (in my data) resumptive relatives can be used to relativise any type of constituent (whether accessible or inaccessible to a gap-creating movement operation), irrespective of the length of any string intervening between relativiser and resumptive. These twin conclusions deal a potentially heavy blow to the Inaccessibility Hypothesis. Nevertheless, the following caveat needs to be noted. My claim that resumptive relatives can (in principle) be used to relativise any kind of constituent does not preclude the possibility of there being processing effects which may lead resumptives to be used more frequently in some contexts than in others. In this connection, I note the following remark made by Tony Kroch (pers. comm.), reporting on unpublished research that he undertook in the 1980s (but which he has been unable to retrieve): I did a small quantitative survey of the relative frequency of resumptive pronouns in different positions in the relative clause. I found that the deeper embedded the gap position is, the more likely it is to be filled with a resumptive. This suggests some sort of psycholinguistic processing effect.
Unfortunately, given the fact that I only collected examples of non-canonical relative structures (more specifically, resumptive relatives and unusual gap structures), I cannot test the relative frequency with which gaps and resumptives are used to relativise different positions in relation to my data. A point which needs to be stressed is that there are important register differences between the two types of relative, in that gap relatives are registerneutral whereas resumptive relatives are restricted to use in colloquial registers. This means that in non-colloquial styles, gap relatives will be preferred for relativising accessible constituents, and resumptives are likely to be stigmatised for register reasons. However, when it comes to relativising inaccessible constituents in non-colloquial styles, there is a dilemma between using a gap structure which poses syntactic/processing problems and using a resumptive structure which poses register problems. Thus, neither solution is optimal and this may well be why many experiments have reported low acceptability ratings for both (as we saw in §2.2). Having examined the distribution of resumptive relatives in this section, in the next three sections I turn to look at their derivation. In §2.4, I look at the nature of (and position occupied by) relativisers like who/which/where/whereby/that
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in resumptive relatives, and then I go on to look at the syntax of the resumptive expressions that they contain, looking at pronominal resumptives in §2.5 and nominal resumptives in §2.6.
2.4
Resumptive Relativisers
This section takes a look at the nature of resumptive relativisers (i.e. the type of relativisers used in resumptive relatives). The range of relativisers which occurred in the 444 resumptive relatives in my data (and their frequency) is as shown in the table below: (43)
Number and percentage of resumptive relatives containing a given relativiser which
that
who
zero
where
whereby
what
No.
135
138
95
38
27
9
2
%
30.4
31.1
21.4
8.6
6.1
2.0
0.5
Item
In this section, I will examine the status of these relativisers focusing on those of greatest interest. I will not discuss the status of what, since this occurred together with a resumptive only in the two free relative clauses bracketed below: (44)
a. That’s [what he got a knighthood for it] (Darren Gough, Talksport Radio) b. That’s [what both coaches have been endeavouring to do so for the last 15 minutes of the game] (Commentator, Talksport Radio)
In canonical free relatives, what is a relative pronoun associated with a gap in the relative clause. However, as can be seen from the examples in (59c, 59d) in §1.5, Darren Gough also uses what as a relative clause complementiser in restrictive gap relatives, so this raises another possibility. However, in the absence of further data, I prefer not to speculate about the status of what in (44). Furthermore, I will not discuss the status of that, since we saw in §1.5 that there is abundant evidence in favour of treating relative that as a complementiser occupying the head REL position of RELP in finite (resumptive and gap) relative clauses introduced by that. Relevant evidence comes from the that being invariable, having no genitive case form, being unable to serve as the complement of an immediately preceding preposition, allowing a potentially unrestricted choice of antecedent, being restricted to use in finite clauses, and being able to precede a FORCEP projection which marks the clause as declarative, interrogative, exclamative, imperative or hortative in force. I shall also not
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84 Resumptive Relatives discuss zero-relatives either: I shall simply assume that edge of RELP in zerorelatives comprises a null complementiser with a null WH specifier. One of the issues I will discuss in more detail is the status of where. In addition to its canonical use as a locative pronoun, where also occurs in my data in non-canonical resumptive relative clauses like those bracketed below: (45)
a. He has players [where he just ignores them] (Sam Wallace, Sky Sports TV) b. He’s one of those players [where he’s been really unlucky] (Graham Courtney, Talksport Radio] c. Gareth Bale is one of those players [where you know he will change the game] (Statman Dave, FullTimeDEVILS podcast) d. There are lots of owners in the Premier League [where you don’t hear from them at all] (Ian Abrahams, Talksport Radio) e. We have two people in particular [where their properties were damaged by flood waters] (Council spokesman, BBC Radio 5) f. It’s one of those moves [where you never quite know how it’s gonna work out] (Jamie Redknapp, Sky Sports TV) g. There are some games to come [where he will feel they’re winnable] (Alan Smith, Sky Sports TV) h. I’ve never known a game [where you just don’t know which way it’s gonna turn till the end of the match] (Tony Cascarino, Talksport Radio) i. It’s one of those things [where you’re not sure whether to do it] (Chubby Chandler, BBC Radio 5) j. It’s also a team [where he’s not going to be criticised if they’re beaten] (Steve Claridge, BBC Radio 5)
It may be that the origins of this structure lie in the use of where as an oblique free relative pronoun, originally with a locative meaning paraphrasable as ‘in a situation of such a kind (that)’, and perhaps later taking on a non-locative meaning paraphrasable as ‘of such a kind (that)’. Indeed, it maybe that where has come to function as a complementiser for finite kind relatives in contemporary colloquial English in sentences like (45). Let’s see why. Potential evidence suggesting that where may be a complementiser in this use comes from the observation that (just like the complementiser that), where in sentences like (45) is invariable, can be used with a wide range of antecedents (e.g. human or non-human, singular or plural), occurs only in finite clauses, and does not occur as the complement of an immediately preceding preposition. Moreover, although (as we saw in §1.5) my data contain examples of wh+that relatives (e.g. ‘the reason why that there is a buzz in here’), I have no examples of where+that in resumptive relatives. Since all examples of whereresumptives in my data occur in kind relatives, it is plausible to draw the
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tentative conclusion that where in (some varieties of) colloquial English has come to take on the role of a kind-defining relative complementiser. If so, we would expect to find it used in filler–gap kind relatives as well – and indeed my data contain the following examples of gap relatives in which where could potentially be analysed as an invariable complementiser like that: (46)
a. He was playing at a level [where he was far too good for ―] (Matt Letissier, Talksport Radio) b. He plays them in positions [where they’re comfortable with ―] (Charlie Nicholas, Sky Sports TV) c. There are certain zones [where you’re looking to aim at ―] (Stan Collymore, Talksport Radio) d. The Mexican defender goes for a header [where he shouldn’t have gone for ―] (Danny Higginbotham, ITV) e. But this is the one match [where football fans, not the average sports fan but football fans, really pay attention to ―] (Sean Wheelock, BBC Radio 5) f. This is the day [where he’s not looking forward to ―] at all (Sean Kelly, Eurosport 1 TV) g. That’s about the time [where they do give them ―] to see whether they are going to go on and do anything (Micky Quinn, Talksport Radio)
In such structures, it is clear that where cannot be treated as an oblique relative pronoun paraphrasable as ‘in a place/situation of such a kind (that)’. By contrast, since where can be substituted by that in such structures, it is more plausible to take it to be a kind-relativising complementiser.18 Lest the idea of treating where as a complementiser should seem implausible, I note that there are potential parallels to be drawn with other languages here. For example, Müller (2014) argues that wowhere functions as a relative complementiser in colloquial varieties of German, and Brandner (2008) makes a similar observation about the use of wowhere in Alemmanic. Likewise, Fiorentino (2007: 278) reports spoken varieties of other languages using a counterpart of where as complementiser (e.g. French où, Italian dove, Greek pou). And Hladnik (2015: 12) notes that detowhere can function as a relative clause complementiser in Slavic languages. Another relativiser which (for some speakers, at least) seems to be following the same evolutionary path as where is whereby. Although this is an 18
It may be that where is also a kind relativiser in the following structure reported by Comrie (2002: 34): (i)
a cake [where you don’t gain weight]
with where having an interpretation paraphrasable as ‘of such a kind that’.
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86 Resumptive Relatives instrumental PP in standard varieties/registers of English with a meaning paraphrasable as ‘by (means of) which’, some speakers seem to use it in a variety of other oblique roles, including a locative role (paraphrasable as ‘where’) as in (47a–47c) below, a temporal role (paraphrasable as ‘when’) as in (47d–47f) and a manner role (paraphrasable as ‘in which’) in (47g–47i): (47)
a. England put themselves in a position [whereby that they took a lot of credit for tonight’s game] (Ron Greenwood, BBC Radio 4; Radford 1988: 486) b. They were always gonna be in a situation [whereby one goal was gonna be enough to win it] (Gary Neville, Talksport Radio) c. It’s ideal that you try to network within the current tech community [whereby you live] and online (mobileapplication.com) d. There may also be times [whereby you may have to wait to view your information if another requestor is using the viewing room] (cheshirewestandchester.gov.uk) e. In order to comply with the Anti-Money Laundering requirements there may be occasions [whereby information is required to be supplied to the National Crimes Agency (NCA) by law . . .] (crdlaw.co.uk) f. Garden leave or gardening leave is a period [whereby an employee continues to receive their normal salary despite having been given notice of dismissal . . .] (personneltoday.com) g. Cornforth charts the manner [whereby in the first half of the 20th century, the English country house was transformed . . .] (aito.com) h. Scenarios used to illustrate the ways [whereby different sectors interact with each other . . .] (researchgate.net) i. The motions called on NISPA to examine ways [whereby members might become more aware of the problems of the developing world . . .] (nipsa .org.uk)
The fact that whereby is followed by the complementiser that in (47a) is compatible with whereby being a relative pronoun positioned on the outer edge of RELP, with that occupying the head REL position. Still, the putative status of whereby as a locative relative pronoun (or, more precisely an oblique relative pronoun with a function akin to that of in which) in sentences like (47) is by no means clearcut. There are several reasons to call into question its putative status as an oblique relative pronoun. One is that it occurs in resumptive relatives in conjunction with non-locative resumptive pronouns like those underlined in the examples below: (48)
a. I think there are a lot of managers [whereby you’re not a hundred percent sure whether they’re going to be there next year] (Ian Abrahams, Talksport Radio) b. I would rather choose to be with someone [whereby they compliment my life] . . . (introvertedjo.wordpress.com)
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c. There is a group of people [whereby they eat anything when they are angry especially junk food] (standardmedia.co.ke) d. I am also a qualified English teacher and have taught many people [whereby English was not their first language] (innerdawncounselling.co.uk) e. . . . she is now in love with someone [whereby she doesn’t want to reveal his name right now] (bnbtv.biz) f. . . . it would be helpful to connect with someone [whereby we could be mutually supportive] (community.scope.org.uk) g. It would be great to be living with someone [whereby we can grab a drink together, watch a movie, and moan about our day] (spareroom.co.uk)
Moreover, unlike oblique relative pronouns (which require an inanimate antecedent), whereby is also used with human antecedents (like managers in 48a, people in 48c, 48d, and someone in 48b, 48e–48g). Furthermore, unlike oblique relative pronouns in standard varieties of English, whereby can also be used in gap relatives like those below, to relativise an argument (whether a subject as in 49a, 49b, or an object as in 49c–49f): (49)
a. I really wanted something [whereby ― totally reflected what was going on at the time] (Jimmy Page, Blabbermouth.net) b. What I like is that we’ve signed arguably the best 3 players from a team [whereby, if you remove the two losses against Bristol, ― have only lost one game this season] (rugbynetwork.net) c. Always try to purchase something [whereby banks are willing to support ― with financing] (daryllum.com) d. Something [whereby you can never imagine ― when you’re too stressed up planning] (jentayugallery.com) e. . . . something [whereby you need to do ― in order to achieve your ultimate goal or goals] (acetutors.com) f. Today the Saints were up against . . . Holly Lane Celtic. A team [whereby we’ve always played very well against ―, but never managed to actually beat ―] (lichfieldcityfc.co.uk)
Data like (48, 49) undermine any attempt to analyse whereby (in the relevant use) as an oblique relative pronoun. On the contrary, the relevant data are more compatible with whereby functioning as a kind relativiser in sentences like (48, 49) – and indeed also in some of the sentences in (47) above. This type of analysis would account for the person/number mismatch between the first person plural resumptive pronoun we and its singular antecedent someone in sentences like (48f, 48g), since we saw in §1.2 that this type of mismatch is characteristic of kind relatives. Still, one issue which remains to be resolved is whether whereby in its use as a kind relativiser is a relative wh-pronoun (like who/which) or
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88 Resumptive Relatives a complementiser (like that). The fact that whereby is followed by that in (47a) suggests that (for the speaker in question) it is a relative pronoun – although it is an open question as to whether other speakers use it in the same way. On the other hand, the fact that whereby is used with both human and non-human antecedents (as noted above) may be more compatible with it being a genderless complementiser like that rather than a wh-pronoun (since relative pronouns like which/who have gender properties). Other factors which might favour a complementiser analysis include the observation that whereby is never preceded by a (pied-piped) preposition, and is restricted to use in finite clauses. Furthermore, some speakers appear to use whereby in place of the complementiser that in consecutive/extent clause structures like the following: (50)
a. His head got so big whereby he was a celebrity for being the QB here (mgoblog.com) b. I never want to get so big whereby I can’t handle a 500-lb order or a mixed pallet containing 15 different items (arwayconfections.com) c. . . . I remember feeling a little awful for being so tired whereby I could only peep at everyone through my eyelashes (mystoryretreat.com.au) d. Does he love Liverpool to the extent whereby Pepe Reina would leave Liverpool? (Mark Chapman BBC Radio 5) e. The hoax has been carried out to the extent whereby people are even posting fake photos of their ‘secret sister’ on social media . . . (independent .co.uk)
We should of course bear in mind the possibility that some speakers (e.g. those who accept whereby+that sentences like 47a) may treat whereby as a wh-pronoun, and others (e.g. those who accept sentences like 50) as a complementiser. Now let’s consider the status of the wh-relativisers which/who in resumptive relatives. At first sight, it might seem as if (like where and perhaps whereby) they could plausibly be analysed as complementisers occupying the head REL position of RELP. One reason for conjecturing this is that neither who nor where is ever followed by the complementiser that in any of the resumptive relative clauses in my data (even though other types of wh+that clause are found in colloquial English, as documented extensively in Radford 2018, §3.4). This would follow if which/who are complementisers which compete with that to occupy the head REL position of RELP in resumptive relatives. Moreover, both which and who are generally invariable in resumptive relatives (just like the complementiser that): for example, my data show the default form who (not the accusative form whom) associated with an accusative resumptive in sentences like (51a, 51b) below, and likewise the default form who (not the
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genitive form whose) associated with a genitive resumptive in sentences like (51c–51e): (51)
a. He’s given the ball away to Hassan, [who, I certainly haven’t seen him for a while] (Alistair Bruce-Ball, BBC Radio 5) b. We need to think about how we deal with prisoners, [who we must try to get more of them to go straight when they come out (Ken Clarke, BBC Radio 5) c. This includes children [who, their performance at school is suffering] (Social worker, BBC Radio 5) d. We were first introduced by a friend, [who, we will try to protect her privacy] (Prince Harry, BBC Radio 5) e. I was going to ask you about the central defender for Palermo, [who I’m not going to ask you how to pronounce his name] (Alan Green, BBC Radio 5)
Furthermore (again, like the complementiser that), neither who nor which in resumptive relatives can generally serve as the complement of an immediately preceding preposition.19 On the contrary, as the examples below illustrate, a (bold-printed) preposition remains in situ (and is not pied-piped) when its object is relativised by who or which: (52)
a. Joe Root, [who everything depends on him], has just edged one to the slips (Commentator, BBC Radio 5) b. He’s got a player in Stephen Ireland [who there were a lot of things expected from him this season] (George Culkin, BBC Radio 5) c. If you read the twitters, [which I read some of them], you’ll see they’re talking Jamaican patois (David Starkey, BBC Radio 5) d. He won in 2005 on an anti-war ticket, [which I share his views on that] (editor of the New Statesman, BBC Radio 5)
The invariability of who/which (and their resistance to preposition pied-piping) raises the possibility that they too could be treated as relative complementisers in resumptive relatives. However, there are two observations which cast doubt on analysing who/ which as complementisers. One is that there are co-occurrence restrictions holding between who/which and their choice of antecedent (in that each only co-occurs with a specifier type of antecedent), and in this respect who/which differ from the complementiser that (which can freely co-occur with a seemingly unrestricted variety of types of antecedent). Thus, in the resumptive relative structures in my data, who is used only where its (bold-printed) antecedent is animate/human/personal, as in the following examples: 19
Apparent exceptions to the claims that who is case-invariant and that who/which do not allow pied-piping are discussed in relation to (59) below.
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90 Resumptive Relatives (53)
a. Kaka is someone [who, I think, in order to shine, he has to be near or close to 100% physically] (Tim Vickery, BBC Radio 5) b. My sporting heroes are these people [who, they confront defeat] (John Rawling, BBC Radio 5) c. We beat a team [who, they might make the quarter-finals] (Listener, BBC Radio 5) d. He passes to Reid, [who I can’t imagine he’s seen much more of the ball in any game all season] (David Oates, BBC Radio 5) e. It’s 3–0 to Liverpool, [who, as we mentioned, one of their European matches is being broadcast on Five Live next week] (Alan Green, BBC Radio 5)
More specifically, the range of antecedents for who in the resumptive relatives in my data comprises human pronouns like someone (as in 53a above); human common nouns like people (as in 53b), person, man, lad, chap, guy(s), woman, girl, fan, player(s) striker, (goal)keeper, defender, midfielder, flanker, colleague, investors, prisoners, adult(s); collective nouns denoting sets of humans such as team/s, club (as in 53c); and proper nouns denoting humans (like Reid in 53d) or sets of humans (like Liverpool in 53e). If we look at the range of antecedents for which in resumptive relatives, we find that these comprise inanimate (pro)nominals or clausal expressions like those bold-printed below: (54)
a. He’s being dragged into something [which he doesn’t know where it will end] (Lawyer, BBC Radio 5) b. Are they resuming activities [which, if they go wrong, we end up footing the bill]? (Politician, BBC Radio 5) c. This is a team [which Fabio Capello has seen them play] (Gabriel Marcotti, BBC Radio 5) d. It was fantastic to get a win against France, [which, they’re one of the best teams in the world] (Listener, BBC Radio 5) e. I refused to play at Arsenal, [which I deeply regret doing that] (Paul Scholes, Talksport Radio)
More specifically, antecedents for which in the resumptive relatives in my data include inanimate pronouns like something (as in 54a); inanimate common nouns like activities (as in 54b), ball, cars, crisis decision/s, gash, job, penalty, passion, story, turnout, valuation, varieties, etc.; inanimate collective nouns like team (as in 54c), club; proper nouns or acronyms denoting names of teams or organisations (like France in 54d); or clauses (like that bold-printed in 54e). As these examples show, a form of gender-matching is required between who/ which and its antecedent, in that who is used where the antecedent is human,
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2.4 Resumptive Relativisers
91
and which where it is not (e.g. where the antecedent is inanimate or genderless).20 The gender-matching requirement between who/which and their antecedent poses a potential problem for any analysis treating them as complementisers. To see why, consider a kind relative like that bracketed in (the constructed example) (55a) below, where the bracketed nominal has a (simplified) structure along the lines of (55b) on the assumptions made here: (55)
a. There are [some players who the media constantly link them with other clubs] b. [QP some [NP players [RELP who the media constantly link them with other clubs]]]
The problem which arises here is that it is not straightforward to account for the gender agreement between who and players if who is a complementiser. In languages/language varieties which show complementiser agreement, a complementiser typically agrees with the closest constituent that it c-commands, namely the subject of its own clause. For instance (according to Haegeman 1992: 49) in West Flemish ‘The complementiser dat, which introduces finite embedded clauses, agrees with the subject NP of the clause that it introduces’ in person and number – as illustrated by the examples below (from Haegeman, loc. cit.): (56)
a.
b.
Kpeinzen da Valère morgen goat I.think that Valère tomorrow goes ‘I think that Valère is going tomorrow’ Kpeinzen dan Valère en Pol morgen I.think that Valère and Pol tomorrow ‘I think that Valère and Paul are going tomorrow’
goan go
Accordingly, the complementiser has the third person singular form da in (56a) and the third person plural form dan in (56b).21 In cases like (56), the complementiser agrees with a constituent that it locally c-commands. However, no such local c-command relation holds between who 20
21
I am assuming here that nouns like team/club/Liverpool can either be treated as inanimate (by virtue of denoting an organisation) or as animate (by virtue of denoting a set of human beings). There may be parallels here with another kind of local subject agreement found in a variety of British English (spoken inter alia in the East End of London) which shows the that/what alternation illustrated in the (constructed) dialogue below: (i) speaker a: I reckon that Den done it (= ‘I think that Den did it’) speaker b: No way – he ain’t got the bottle (= ‘No way – he hasn’t got the courage’) speaker a: So who d’you reckon what done it, then? (= ‘So who do you think that did it, then?’)
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92 Resumptive Relatives and players in (55), for the simple reason that who does not c-command players. It might at first sight seem as if we can overcome this problem by adopting an Antecedent Raising account under which the noun players originates as the complement of them and is attracted by the REL head containing who to move to the edge of RELP, before moving on to the edge of NP and thereby deriving the structure below (with copies marked by strikethrough being present in the syntax but given a null spellout at PF):22 (57)
[QP [Q some] [NP [N players] [RELP players [REL who] the media constantly link them players with other clubs]]]
We could then suppose that the REL head who undergoes gender concord with the copy of the noun players which moves into spec-RELP in (57) – an analysis which would involve a local agreement relation between players and who. Nonetheless, this kind of account is problematic in other ways, since it cannot be generalised to appositive resumptive relatives, for the simple reason that these don’t involve Antecedent Raising – as we see from the ungrammaticality of sentences such as: (58)
*This particular portrait of himself, which John didn’t paint it, sold for £500
Since pronouns like he/she/it agree in gender with their antecedents, a more plausible account would be to suppose that who/which are not complementisers but rather relative pronouns which agree in gender with their antecedents.23 If so, structural uniformity considerations would lead us to conclude that (like relative wh-phrases) they occupy the specifier position of RELP. Evidence which lends additional support to the claim that who/which in resumptive relatives are pronouns occupying spec-RELP comes from sentences like those below, which occur both in my data and in the Kroch corpus: (59)
22
23
a. There may be several of them, [one of which we know where it is] (Scientist interviewed on BBC science show, Kroch corpus) b. It’s based on a series of novels by Peter Robinson, [of which I’ve read quite a few of them] (TV critic, BBC Radio 5) c. It’s the four outfield players that count, [of which Joe Cole has got to be one of them] Listener, BBC Radio 5)
Here, the complementiser that shows wh-agreement with the who subject of its clause, and consequently is spelled out as what at PF. See the discussion of what as a complementiser in §1.5. If we suppose that movement from a specifier to a head position is barred, we will have to assume that players moves from spec-RELP to spec-NP (not to the head N position of NP). It may be that gender in English pronouns is reducible to two binary features, with pronouns being specified as [±human], and some [+human] pronouns being further specified as [±feminine]. On this view, relative pronouns would be spelled out as who/which depending on whether they are [±human]. See Namai (2000) and Siemund (2008) on gender features in English.
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d. He was working with the spinners, [of whom which of them they will select remains a mystery] (Australian reporter, Talksport Radio) e. We have Olsen courted by the media, writing a CBS reporter from his cell and being allowed a lengthy ‘apology’ to the parents of the children, [some of whom he recorded their death throttles as he drove spikes into their brains] (Reporter in Ottawa Citizen, Kroch corpus) f. It’s good for making contacts – especially this lady [whose mother I stayed out at her house] (example from Pawley & Syder 1983, cited in Kroch corpus)
These sentences provide two sources of potential evidence in support of treating who/which as pronouns: firstly, far from having the complementiser property of being invariable, who is spelled out in the accusative form whom in (59d–59e), and in the genitive form whose in (59f); and secondly, in each of the examples in (59a–59e), the relativiser which/whom functions as the object of an immediately preceding preposition. Furthermore, the fact that which/who/ whose are contained within a larger phrase (PP in the case of 59a–59e, DP in the case of 59f) means that the phrase containing it must occupy the specifier position of RELP in such examples, since phrases can occupy a specifier position but not a head position. Since the wh-relativisers are pronouns (contained within phrases) positioned on the edge of RELP in sentences like (59), structural uniformity considerations suggest that we take them to be pronouns positioned on the edge of RELP in other uses as well. Our discussion hitherto has assumed that who/which in resumptive relatives are pronouns. However, an alternative possibility (which arises under the matching analysis of relative clauses discussed in §1.6) is that they are determiners which modify a matching silent copy of the antecedent NP (i.e. a copy which is present in the syntax, but given a null spellout in the phonology). Under this analysis, the resulting which/who+NP string would be a phrase (serving as the specifier of a null REL head), and the bracketed relative clauses in (60a/61a) below would have the respective simplified structures in (60b/61b): (60)
a. We want to save these varieties, [which we’ve got very good records of them] (Horticulturalist, BBC Radio 5) b. [RELP which varieties [REL ø] we’ve got very good records of them]
(61)
a. This is a girl [who, in real life, you’d never let her have the keys to your house, right?] (Jeremy Clarkson, BBC2 TV) b. [RELP who girl [REL ø], in real life, you’d never let her have the keys to your house, right?]
The wh-determiner which/who would agree in gender with the matching silent copy of the antecedent NP (marked by strikethrough above), so that which is
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94 Resumptive Relatives required with an inanimate complement like varieties, and who with a human complement like girl. However, the matching analysis is not without its problems. After all, who doesn’t otherwise function as a determiner, and determiners don’t otherwise agree in gender with their complements (for instance, demonstratives in English expressions like this book/boy and these books/boys agree with their complements in number, not gender). Moreover, there are resumptive relative clauses like those bracketed below where it is potentially problematic to treat which/who as determiners modifying a matching copy of the antecedent: (62)
a. It can change gear in less than 50 milliseconds, [which I can’t demonstrate that even if I blink an eye] (Richard Hammond, BBC2 TV) b. We keep talking about Cesc Fabregas, [who we all love the way he plays] (Gareth Southgate, ITV) c. He’s someone [who, when you walk around the stadium, people, they hold him close in their heart] (Anna Foster, BBC Radio 5) d. Leicester brought on Vardy at half time and then brought on Mahrez in the 60th minute, [who, they made a big difference at the other end of the pitch] (Jamie Carragher, Sky Sports TV)
The matching analysis requires us to suppose that which in (62a) modifies a silent copy of the clause it can change gear in less than 50 milliseconds, and this seems implausible because determiners in English do not otherwise allow clausal complements. In the case of (62b), the matching analysis requires us to posit that who is a determiner modifying the proper noun Cesc Fabregas, and this is again potentially problematic because proper nouns are not usually modified by determiners in English.24 In (62c), it is unlikely that who would modify a silent copy of its antecedent someone since such pronouns are not otherwise modified by determiners (cf. ‘He’s not the person/*someone that I used to know’). And in (62d), who has split antecedents (Vardy and Mahrez), so it is not clear what would serve as the complement of who under the matching analysis. Thus, the antecedent copy implementation of the determiner analysis would appear to be problematic for sentences like those in (62).25 24
25
However, this particular argument is weakened by exceptions like: (i) He’s not the Cesc Fabregas that we once knew (ii) This Cesc Fabregas, he’s a really clever player One could nonetheless envisage an alternative version of the determiner analysis whereby who/ which are determiners which can modify (and agree in gender with) an abstract light noun, so that which is the spellout of WHICH THING(S), and who of WHICH PERSON(S), and this analysis could then handle cases like those in (62) – albeit it is far from obvious what advantages such an abstract determiner analysis would offer over the traditional analysis of who/which as pronouns.
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To summarise: in this section, we have looked at the nature of the various relativisers found in my data on resumptive relatives. I have argued that the item that is invariable, genderless, inherently finite, and resistant to piedpiping, and concluded that it is a relative complementiser occupying the head REL position of a finite RELP. I also argued that (for some people), where/ whereby seem to have a similar status as complementisers used to introduce kind relatives. By contrast, who/which have gender properties and can piedpipe additional material along with them in sentences like (59), suggesting that they are pronouns (or determiners) positioned on the edge of RELP. Having looked in this section at the nature of the relativisers found in resumptive relatives, I now turn to examine the syntax of the resumptive expressions used in relative clauses in my data. More specifically, I look at pronominal resumptives in §2.5, and at nominal resumptives in §2.6.
2.5
Pronominal Resumptives
As will be clear from examples in earlier sections, a wide range of different types of expression can function as resumptives in relative clauses. The summary table below shows the number and percentage of different types of resumptive expression found in the 444 resumptive relatives in my data: (63)
Number and percentage of relatives in my data with a given type of resumptive
Type of structure
No.
%
Relatives with resumptive personal pronouns
299
67.3
Relatives with resumptive demonstrative pronouns
56
12.6
Relatives with resumptive pronominal quantifiers/numerals/one(s)
17
3.8
Relatives with resumptive pronominal adverbs
22
5.0
Relatives with resumptive nominals
50
11.4
The table is to be read as follows: the first row tells us that 299 of the 444 resumptive relatives in my data (67.3%) contained a resumptive personal pronoun. Since (as this table makes clear), the vast majority of the resumptive expressions used in my data are pronominal in nature, I shall begin by discussing these in this section, before moving on to look at nominal resumptives in §2.6. In each case, I ask whether the relevant structures are better handled in terms of Merge or Move. Under a Merge analysis, the relativiser is merged on the edge of RELP, the resumptive is merged in a position below RELP,
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96 Resumptive Relatives and (in the case of restrictive and kind relatives) the antecedent is merged on the edge of an NP above RELP, so that each of these three constituents is generated independently. By contrast, under a Move analysis, some constituent undergoes movement from the position occupied by the resumptive to the edge of RELP and/or to the edge of NP. Since the most frequent type of pronominal resumptives found in my data are personal pronouns, I begin by looking at whether a Merge or Move analysis can better account for resumptive personal pronouns. To make our discussion more concrete, consider the derivation of a resumptive relative structure like that bracketed below: (64)
We need [players who, we can count on them in a crisis] (Glenn Hoddle, ITV)
Under the Merge analysis, the bold-printed antecedent, italicised relativiser and underlined resumptive are all merged in situ, in separate positions. Thus, the antecedent players is merged on the edge of NP, the relativiser on the edge of RELP, and the resumptive as the complement of PP, so that the nominal bracketed in (62) above has the structure shown in highly simplified form below (where the overall structure is taken to be a quantifier phrase headed by a null quantifier ø with an interpretation paraphrasable as ‘an unspecified number/quantity of’): (65)
We need [QP ø [NP players [RELP who we can count [PP on them] in a crisis]]]
The resumptive pronoun them agrees visibly in number with the antecedent players, and is assigned accusative case by the transitive preposition on. The relative pronoun who has the interpretation ‘of such a kind (that)’, agrees visibly in gender with the antecedent noun player (since who is used rather than which) and is assigned default case (and so is spelled out as the default form who) by virtue of not falling within the domain of any case assigner. The antecedent noun players (and the null quantifier associated with it) are in turn assigned accusative case by the transitive verb need. Thus, under the Merge analysis, antecedent, relativiser and resumptive are each merged as independent constituents. This accounts for each having its own case properties – as illustrated by the kind relative in (66a) below and the appositive relative in (66b): (66)
a. Paul Scholes was one of those players [who you never got to know what his voice sounded like] (Lee Dixon, BBC Radio 5) b. In lane 8 on the outside is [the Ethiopian Magiso, who, it’s her birthday today, actually] (Steve Cram, BBC3 TV)
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Thus in (66a) the antecedent DP those players has accusative case (assigned by the transitive preposition of ), the relativiser who has default case, and the resumptive his has genitive case. Similarly in (66b), the antecedent DP the Ethiopian Magiso has nominative case, the relativiser who has default case, and the resumptive her has genitive case. The relativiser who has a kind interpretation loosely paraphrasable as ‘of such a kind (that)’ in kind relatives like (66a), and a topic-like interpretation paraphrasable as ‘speaking of whom’ in appositives like (66b). However, an alternative to the Merge approach is to treat resumptive relatives as involving much the same kind of movement operations as gap relatives. By way of background information, let’s therefore remind ourselves of the discussion of the derivation of gap relatives in §1.6 by considering the derivation of (filler–) gap relatives like: (67)
We need players [who/that we can count ― on in a crisis]
As we saw in §1.6, such structures have generally been taken to require dual derivations, one of which involves the antecedent being generated in situ, the other of which involves the antecedent originating in the gap position, and from there raising to its superficial position on the edge of an NP above the relative clause. One account of that-resumptives (Donati & Cecchetto 2011) supposes that the antecedent noun players in (67) originates in the gap position and from there undergoes an Antecedent Raising operation which remerges it as the head of an NP positioned immediately above the relative clause, as shown below:26 (68)
We need [QP [NP players [RELP that we can count on — in a crisis]]] ANTECEDENT RAISING
Gap relatives containing where(by) can be treated similarly, if (as argued in the previous section) where(by) can be a complementiser in kind relatives for some speakers, and (like that) occupies the head REL position of RELP. But what of who/which-relatives? On one version of the dual derivation account (adapted from Radford 2016: 430–8), the derivation of the whorelative in (67) would proceed as follows. Under the antecedent-in-situ derivation, the antecedent players is merged on the edge of an NP outside 26
The derivation in (68) is simplified by setting aside the question of whether the antecedent transits through intermediate positions: see Radford (2016: 410–38) for a detailed exposition and critique of Donati & Cecchetto’s analysis. An incidental detail is that they use CP rather than RELP as a label for the relative clause.
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98 Resumptive Relatives the relative clause, and the relative pronoun originates in the gap position and from there undergoes Wh-Movement to the edge of RELP, as shown below: (69)
[QP [NP players [RELP who we can count [PP on —] in a crisis]]] WH-MOVEMENT
A variant of this is to suppose that who is a determiner which has a matching copy of the antecedent players as its complement (given a null spellout at PF), so who in (69) is the spellout of the DP who players. Appositives can be taken to have a similar Wh-Movement derivation, except that the relative clause forms a separate constituent from its antecedent. By contrast, under (one implementation of) the alternative Antecedent Raising derivation for (67), who is a determiner which takes the antecedent players as its complement, and the resulting DP who players originates as the complement of the preposition on, and from there moves to the edge of RELP. Subsequently, the antecedent players moves on its own to the edge of an NP immediately above RELP, so stranding who on the edge of RELP, as shown in schematic form below: (70)
ANTECEDENT RAISING [QP
[NP players [RELP who players we can count [PP on —] in a crisis]]] WH-MOVEMENT
The lower arrow in (70) marks Wh-Movement of the wh-phrase who players to the edge of RELP, and the upper arrow shows the antecedent players being extracted out of the wh-phrase and raised to the edge of an NP immediately above RELP. This derivation is not available in appositives, where the antecedent and relative clause form separate constituents. The dual derivation account can be extended to wh-less relatives if we suppose that they contain a null wh-relativiser in place of who/which. For a more detailed discussion (and critique) of a number of variants of the dual derivation account, see Radford (2016: 394–477). Having briefly sketched how (specific implementations of) the movement analysis of gap relatives might work, let me now turn to consider the feasibility of extending (some version of) the movement account to resumptive relatives. The key problem which arises under such an approach is how a movement analysis could account for resumptive pronouns being left behind in resumptive
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2.5 Pronominal Resumptives
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relatives if these involve the same kind of movement operations as gap relatives. Pesetsky (1998) suggests that resumptive pronouns are partial spellouts of the traces of moved constituents, spelling out the person, number, gender and case features of the moved constituent. So, for example, under the analyses sketched in (69, 70), Wh-Movement of who (players) to the edge of RELP would leave behind a trace whose case and agreement features are spelled out as the (third person plural accusative) pronoun them. On this view, personal pronouns are essentially agreement markers (i.e. chunks of morphology which spell out bundles of case/agreement features). However, the trace spellout account of resumptives is potentially problematic in several respects. For one thing, under the copy theory of movement, we might expect the resumptive to be an exact copy of the moved wh-constituent, with the same spellout and the same case/agreement features. But this isn’t so, since the trace copy left behind by Wh-Movement in (69, 70) has a different spellout from the moved wh-constituent (in that the trace of who is spelled out as them rather than who). This is puzzling because in other structures in which we find lower copies of moved wh-constituents spelled out overtly, we typically find a whpronoun rather than a non-wh pronoun, as illustrated by the underlined copies in the examples below (from Radford 2016: 402):27 (71)
a. It’s a world record [which many of us thought which wasn’t on the books at all] (Steve Cram, BBC2 TV) b. There are many others [who I am sure who can chip in] (c9v-forum.com) c. I will start with 8 reasons [why I think why William and Mary and the surrounding area is a wonderful place] (physicsgre.com) d. This is an area [where I think where shortsightedness could really come back and bite us in the ass, but it would happen in any society] (meta-rhetoric.com)
Moreover, under the trace account of resumptives, we would expect the wh-constituent and the resumptive to have identical case properties (since the resumptive is claimed to be a trace copy of the moved wh-constituent). And yet as we see from sentences like (4, 51c–51e) above and (72) below, this is not so:
27
One might try to account for this difference by supposing that a lower copy of a moved constituent is spelled out as a wh-pronoun when occupying an A-bar position, and as a plain (non-wh) pronoun when occupying an A-position. We could then suppose (e.g.) that the lower copy of which is in spec-CP in (71a), but that it is in spec-TP in the corresponding non-wh resumptive structure below: (i)
It’s a world record [which many of us thought it wasn’t on the books at all]
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100 Resumptive Relatives (72)
That was Susan Meadows there, [who the case of her son is being investigated by the Police Complaints Commission] (Sean Lay, BBC Radio 4)
Thus, the wh-constituent who has default case in (72) but the resumptive her has genitive case, thereby calling the trace account into question. Furthermore, the claim that resumptive pronouns are simply chunks of morphology which spell out sets of case/agreement features and have no independent content of their own proves problematic in that (as shown in the table in 63 above) there are other types of pronoun used as resumptives which can’t plausibly be taken to be case/agreement morphemes with no independent semantic content. For example, my data contain 56 sentences like those below in which the (underlined) resumptive is a demonstrative pronoun: (73)
a. Depression is something [that people don’t realise how deadly an illness that is] (Ricky Hatton, BBC Radio 5) b. Naturally aggressive players, [which Dhoni is one of those], can’t restrain themselves (Michael Vaughan, BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra) c. Let’s move on to another story, [which I cannot tell you how angry this makes me] (Reporter, Talksport Radio) d. Then you launched these podcasts, [which how many times have these been downloaded]? (Richard Bacon, BBC Radio 5)
They also contain 17 cases like the following where the (italicised) resumptive pronoun is a quantifier or numeral: (74)
a. Norwich and Ipswich, they’re teams [that you’ve played for both], obviously (Georgie Bingham, Talksport Radio) b. Prime ministers have to make decisions [that some are public, some are not] (Tony Livesey, BBC Radio 5) c. The players were playing with passion today, [which I haven’t seen much this season] (Listener, BBC Radio 5) d. Last week we spoke about their problems, particularly their flankers, [who they’ve got so many to choose from] (Mark Saggers, Talksport Radio) e. Klopp has brought in new players, [which Mourinho is hoping to bring in two or three as well] (Micky Quinn, Talksport) f. Reina made his mistake, [which he probably makes one every five years] (Perry Groves, BBC Radio 5)
Since demonstratives, quantifiers and numerals have independent semantic content, it is implausible to treat them as mere chunks of morphology which simply spell out sets of case and agreement features at PF. Given the potential problems posed by the analysis of resumptives as partial spellouts of traces, let’s explore an alternative view of resumptives as constituents which are stranded by movement. Under the stranding analysis,
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resumptives like those italicised in (74) would be quantifiers stranded by movement of the relativised constituent which they modify. For example, on one version of the Antecedent Raising analysis, both in (74a) would be stranded by movement of the relativised noun teams from the relativised position (marked by strikethrough) in (75) below to the (italicised) antecedent position (perhaps transiting through the edge of RELP, though this is not shown below): (75)
[NP teams [RELP that you’ve played for both teams]]
The underlined resumptive would then be a quantifier stranded by movement of its complement. In the case of an appositive wh-relative like (74f), the numeral one would be stranded by Wh-Movement of its wh-complement (which would be which mistake under the matching analysis) to the edge of RELP, resulting in a structure like the following: (76)
[RELP which mistake[REL ø] he probably makes one which mistake every five years]
Which would be the relative counterpart of such in one such mistake, and items marked by strikethrough would receive a null spellout at PF. The stranding analysis can be extended to resumptive personal pronouns, if these are treated as stranded determiners (following Boeckx 2003, 2007, 2012). For example, on one variant of the Antecedent Raising analysis of sentences like: (77)
The whole thing about the World Cup is that you do see [countries that you’ll never see them again] (Guest on Tony Livesey show, BBC Radio 5)
the bracketed nominal will have a derivation in which the antecedent noun countries originates in the position marked by strikethrough below, and moves to the italicised position in the structure (which is simplified, inter alia, by showing only the initial and final positions of countries): (78)
[QP ø [NP countries [RELP that you’ll never see them countries again]]]
On this view, the underlined resumptive pronoun will be a determiner stranded under movement of its complement. In the case of appositive wh-relatives like that below: (79)
All the police cars went there, which you can’t actually see them from here (Listener, BBC Radio 5)
the italicised resumptive them would be a determiner stranded by movement of its wh-complement which (police cars) out of the DP them which (police cars) to the edge of the relative clause projection RELP.
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102 Resumptive Relatives However, the stranding analysis of resumptives proves problematic in several respects. One relates to structures like those in (74) above, where a quantifier is supposedly stranded under movement. The problem posed by this is that quantifiers in standard varieties of English don’t allow extraction of a nominal which they quantify unless it is the object of the partitive preposition of, as we see from the example below (adapted from 39b above): (80)
Sleep is definitely something [we didn’t get much *(of) ―]
The fact that there is no of after the quantifier in sentences like those in (74) makes it unlikely that they involve movement.28 Moreover, the stranding analysis also faces problems in relation to cases where there is a mismatch between the syntactic number of the antecedent and that of the resumptive. As sentences like (81a) below illustrate, collective singular nouns like club/team/side/squad/nation allow either strict (syntactic) singular agreement or sloppy (semantic) plural agreement with a (bold-printed) following verb. Nonetheless when a singular collective noun is modified by an agreeing determiner, it requires strict syntactic agreement with the determiner and hence the determiner must be singular, as (81b) below illustrates: (81)
a. This team is/are improving all the time b. Why on earth do you support this/*these team?
Thus, if resumptives are stranded determiners, we should expect to find strict syntactic number agreement between antecedent and resumptive. However, my data contain sentences like those below in which we find a plural (underlined) resumptive associated with an antecedent containing an (italicised) singular noun: (82)
28
a. They’re a team [that they play high on confidence] (Ally McCoist, Sky Sports TV) b. This is a side [that you’d expect them to do well] (Ian Dennis, BBC Radio 5)
Recall that we saw in relation to the examples in (39) in §2.3 that partitive of allows extraction of its complement. It is also possible (in more formal styles) for of to be pied-piped along with the relative pronoun in structures like those below: (i)
What a thrill that was, to sit with the great man for two hours talking about previous FA cup semi-finals, of which he’d commentated on [so many ―] (Arlo White, BBC Radio 5) (ii) That should bring us to half time without any drama, of which it has to be said there has been [precious little ―] (Alan Parry, ITV). (iii) There’s something in it for the spinners, of which Middlesex have [plenty ―] (Nasser Hussain, Sky Sports TV)
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c. He has a club [that there’s only one way they can go] (Graham Roberts, Talksport Radio) d. Every so often, sport throws up a genius [that you can’t believe how good they are] (Barry Hearne, Talksport Radio) e. There’s only one nation [we’re sure they’re out of the tournament] and that’s Cameroon (Connor MacNamara, BBC Radio 5) f. They’ve got a tail [that I’d like a bowl at a few of them] (Geoff Boycott, BBC Radio 5 Sport Extra) g. That’s the sort of thing [that you need them to go in] (Colin Montgomerie, Sky Sports TV)
The Kroch corpus shows examples of similar structures in which a plural resumptive pronoun has a singular antecedent, including those below: (83)
a. . . . a friend that you can be honest with, [that you’re not trying to impress or patronise them] (Joanne Sweeney) b. . . . and said to me ‘I have a child [that I’d like to give them a skill that they can use when they’re eighty]’ (Gabe Mirkin) c. They’re the kind of thing [that she’ll probably just wear them home] (Linda Redding) d. I can’t seem to get anyone that’ll work over there [that I can halfway trust ’em . . .] (Harold Draper) e. That’s the one [that they did seven of them in one shooting] (Martha Kroch)
In addition, my data contain examples like those in (84a–84c) below in which we find the converse pattern of a singular resumptive associated with a plural antecedent, and Kuha (1994) reports the example in (84d): (84)
a. These are mistakes [that, when you do this in the Premier League, you pay the price] (Bob Bradley, BBC1 TV) b. They can produce things [that you go ‘Where did that come from?’] (Graham Taylor, BBC Radio 5) c. There were bowlers in county cricket [that you just knew he’s gonna get me out with an orange] (David Lloyd, Sky Sports TV) d. I’m gonna have someone there, just so books aren’t stolen, [which I think one was taken last year] (unidentified American informant, Kuha 1994)
And the Kroch corpus contains similar examples of singular resumptives with plural antecedents, including the following: (85)
a. . . . things that she and I can now say are things [that we haven’t had that in our relationship for about five years] (Martha Kroch) b. There are a lot of things [that it would be nice to have somebody around just to get them to do it] (Nina Segre)
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104 Resumptive Relatives c. . . . from the furnishings in the house [which you can’t always tell by that], I figured he couldn’t afford it (Harold Draper) d. It has a number of mountain ranges [that the highest one has peaks averaging 15,000 feet] (Martha Kroch) e. . . . four variable rule analyses [that I could lecture on each one for a couple of hours] (Bill Labov)
Given the requirement for strictly syntactic number agreement between determiner and noun illustrated in (81b) above, sentences like (82–85) provide evidence against treating resumptive pronouns as determiners stranded by movement of a complement containing (a copy of) the antecedent noun, since they would require an illicit source in which there is a mismatch between the number of the determiner and that of the noun it modifies: e.g. in (82a) they would be a plural determiner modifying the singular noun team, and in (84a), this would be a singular determiner modifying the plural noun mistakes. Further problems arise in the case of sentences such as the following, where there is a mismatch in person/number between the (italicised) resumptive and its bold-printed antecedent: (86)
a. We were the team [that we looked like we were gonna create something and score] (Chris Coleman, BT Sport TV) b. We’re a club [that we need our big players] (Paul Lambert, BBC1 TV) c. We’re the only club in England [that we’re in all four competitions] (Listener, Talksport Radio) d. I work for a company [that we manage buildings in London] (Listener, BBC Radio 5) e. And now it’s hello to Graham Taylor, [who have you managed to lift your head after that six-nil defeat at St James’s Park?] (Colin Murray, BBC Radio 5) f. My thanks to Matt Murray, [who, what did you make of that goalkeeping performance by Ben Foster?] (Presenter, Talksport Radio)
Here we find an (italicised) nominal antecedent being reprised by first person we in (86a–86d) and by second person you in (86e, 86f). Since we/you (when used as prenominal determiners) require a plural complement (cf. we players/ *we team) it’s problematic to propose a determiner stranding analysis of a sentence like (86a) under which the singular NP team originates as the complement of we and then undergoes Antecedent Raising, thereby stranding we: moreover, there is also a potential person mismatch between resumptive and antecedent, in that the resumptive we is first person, and a DP like the team is third person (cf. ‘The team take themselves/*ourselves seriously’). By contrast, under the alternative Merge analysis outlined in (65) above, sloppy agreement between resumptive and antecedent proves unproblematic, since this is
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found in sentences like those below where the pronoun and its antecedent are independent constituents merged in separate positions: (87)
a. I follow this team because they are amazing b. Championships and cups, this/that is what we strive for c. My/Your team is the best because we/you win everything
If a plural pronoun like they can have a nominal containing a collective singular noun like team as its antecedent (as in 87a above), and conversely if singular pronouns like this/that can function as collective singular pronouns which can serve as the antecedent of a plural expression denoting a set of entities (as in 87b), sloppy number agreement between antecedent and resumptive in sentences like (82–85) can be accommodated within a Merge analysis, but cannot be handled in a straightforward fashion within a Move analysis. Similarly, since we see from sentences like (87c) that first/second person pronouns like we/you can have a third person antecedent, sentences like (86) pose no problems for a Merge analysis. A determiner stranding analysis becomes even more difficult to defend in the face of examples like the following (88e, 88g being from my own data, and the rest from the Kroch corpus): (88)
a. I had this friend [who we used to go out . . .] (Susan Michini) b. I have a friend that I talk to [that we left-dislocate and topicalize all the time] (Wendy C.) c. And that’s how I met that guy Albert [who later on the next week, okay, we went up the art museum and we got jumped by Puerto Ricans] (Denise) d. I have a manager, Joe Scandolo [who we’ve been together over twenty years] (Don Rickles, TV comedian) e. I met someone [who, we just clicked] (Sex therapist, BBC Radio 5) f. He’s the one [they used to pick up coal on the way to school] (Martha Kroch) g. Leicester brought on Vardy at half time and then brought on Mahrez in the 60th minute, [who, they made a big difference at the other end of the pitch] (Jamie Carragher, Sky Sports TV) h. . . . an S with one bar over it or an S with two bars over it, [which I’m beginning to understand what they are] (Martha Kroch)
In such cases, the resumptive pronoun has split antecedents: for example, we is paraphrasable as ‘this friend and I’ in (88a), as ‘the friend and I’ in (88b), as ‘that guy Albert and I’ in (88c), as ‘the manager and I’ in (88d) and as ‘the person in question and I’ in (88e). Likewise, they is paraphrasable as ‘the person in question and he’ in (88f), as ‘Vardy and Mahrez’ in (88g) and ‘the s with one bar over it and the s with two bars over it’ in (88h).
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106 Resumptive Relatives A determiner analysis is implausible in such cases, since we would have to say (e.g.) that we in (88a) derives from a structure such as we friend and I, and it is not obvious how the items friend/and/I would be deleted at PF in a principled fashion. Moreover, a determiner analysis would make wrong predictions about the case marking of the resumptive in such sentences. For example, when we serves as a determiner heading a DP with an NP complement that functions as the subject of a finite clause, it can be spelled out as us in colloquial English, e.g. as in: (89)
Us linguists never agree on anything
Consequently, a determiner analysis would lead us to expect that we can be substituted by us in examples like (88a–88e). However, this is not the case in my data, suggesting that resumptive we is simply a pronoun, not a determiner with an NP complement. By contrast, sentences like (88a) can be accommodated under a Merge analysis in which we is a pronoun (referring to the speaker/s and one or more other individuals) which is merged in the subject position inside the relative clause, and its split antecedents are merged in their respective positions outside the relative clause. We can then handle split antecedent resumptive relatives like those in (88) in the same way as we handle other sentences in which pronouns have split antecedents, like that below: (90)
I had this friend, and we used to go out clubbing together
Since we is generated independently of its split antecedents in (90), uniformity considerations suggest that we treat split antecedent resumptives like those in (88) in a parallel fashion. Additional problems posed by treating resumptives as stranded determiners arise in relation to the observation that resumptive they can undergo havecliticisation in sentences such as the following: (91)
a. There are a lot of countries [that we don’t really know how they’ve done] (Sports reporter, BBC Radio 5) b. This is a group of players [who I would imagine they’ve never played together before] (Football official, BBC Radio 5) c. They’re the type of team [that, once they’re on the slippery slope, they’ve no way back (Mark Nicholas, Channel 5 TV)
Radford (2016) argues that have can only cliticise onto a word ending in a vowel/dipthong which c-commands and immediately precedes have. In the
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light of this requirement, consider why have cannot cliticise onto the quantifier/ numeral few/two in sentences like those below: (92)
a. Most students have passed, and few have/*few’ve failed b. Ten students have passed, and two have/*two’ve failed
A plausible answer is that the clauses containing few/two have a syntactic structure which includes the TP shown below, if subjects are in spec-TP, if we make the simplifying assumption that numerals are quantifiers, and if we suppose that few/two in (92) have a copy of the noun students as their complement that is given a null spellout in the phonology (as in the analysis of pronouns proposed in Freidin & Vergaud 2001): (93)
[TP [QP [Q few/two] students] [T have] failed]
Given the analysis in (93), it follows that have-cliticisation cannot take place, since the quantifier few/two does not c-command have (because the mother of Q-few/two is QP, and QP does not contain have). Furthermore few/two does not immediately precede have either, since the two are separated by a silent copy of the NP students. In the light of this assumption, let’s return to consider the significance of resumptive they allowing have-cliticisation in sentences like (91) above. If resumptives like they are stranded determiners, and if we adopt a (specific implementation of the) Antecedent Raising approach and the spec-TP analysis of subjects, the TP containing have in (91a) will have the superficial structure below, if they is a determiner stranded by raising the antecedent countries: (94)
[TP [DP [D they] countries] [T have] done how]
However, the problem with the structure in (94) is that the pronoun they does not c-command have (because the mother of D-they is DP, and DP does not contain have), nor does they immediately precede have (because the two are separated by countries). Thus, treating they as a determiner stranded by movement of its complement wrongly predicts that have-cliticisation cannot apply in sentences like (91). By contrast, under a Merge analysis on which resumptives are pronouns without a complement, the relevant TP in (91a) will have the superficial structure below: (95)
[TP [PRN they] [T have] done how]
Since the pronoun they c-commands have (because the mother of PRN-they is the TP node, and TP contains have), and since they immediately precedes the auxiliary have, such an analysis accounts for resumptive subjects allowing have-cliticisation in sentences like (91).
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108 Resumptive Relatives Further problems with treating resumptive pronouns as stranded determiners are posed by sentences such as the following, where the resumptive is adverbial: (96)
a. He’s the senior professional at Gleneagles, [which I’m sure a lot of you have been there] (John Inverdale, BBC Radio 5) b. We’re all humans living in a world [which what right does any country have to say ‘You can’t come and live here’?] (Listener, BBC Radio 5) c. A lot of companies contacted this week said they are low on stock and due to the amount we need they can’t install until after Xmas, [which we can’t wait until then] (email which Peter Trudgill tells me he was sent by his property management agent) d. We need to concentrate on those very early years, [which we’ve not done so in the very recent past] (Frank Field, BBC Radio 4) e. I once went to see Atletico Madrid against Aston Villa for reasons [that I can’t even remember why] (Mark Chapman, BBC Radio 5)
It’s hard to see how the underlined resumptive adverbs could be analysed as determiners stranded by movement of which in (96a–96d) or reasons in (96e), because such adverbs don’t function as determiners (as we see from the ungrammaticality of *there which/*here which/*then which/*so which/*why reasons). Rather, it seems more plausible to propose a Merge analysis under which the antecedent, relativiser and adverb in such cases are directly merged in situ, in separate positions. Under the Merge analysis, the kind relative nominal in (96b) would have an interpretation paraphrasable as ‘a world of such a kind that I would ask what right does any country have to say: You can’t come and live here’; and the appositive relative clause in (96d) would have an interpretation paraphrasable as ‘in relation to which I would say that we’ve not done so in the recent past’. A final source of evidence favouring a Merge analysis of pronominal resumptives over a Move analysis is that a Move analysis will lead to violation of syntactic constraints that are not violated under a Merge analysis. This point has already been made obliquely (albeit in a different context) in §2.3 in relation to the use of resumptives to relativise constituents which are rendered inaccessible to movement by syntactic constraints. The point was illustrated extensively in (22–26, 28–32) above, and I shall only mention one instance here, relating to sentences like those in (28), a subset of which are repeated in (97) below: (97)
a. He’s willing to give it a go for Robbie di Matteo, who [behind him] there is Steve Appleton (=28a) b. Are they resuming activities which, [if they go wrong], we end up footing the bill? (=28b)
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c. He sent me a few stickers, which, [most of them] I’ve got, unfortunately (=28c) d. I saw the penalty and he was outside the box, which [how the referee gave it], I don’t know (=28d)
On one variant of the movement analysis, such sentences will involve extraction of who/which out of a DP headed by the pronoun him/they/them/which, and thus (in the case of 97c) involve the kind of Wh-Movement operation arrowed below: (98)
He sent me a few stickers, [RELP which [QP most of [DP them which]] I’ve got —, unfortunately]
However, in each of the cases in (97), Wh-Movement will involve extraction of a (bold-printed) relative pronoun out of a bracketed constituent occupying the specifier position in a peripheral projection (spec-MODP in 97a, 97b; spec-FOCP in 97c, 97d), thereby leading to violation of the Constraint on Extraction Domains/CED (27). In the case of (97b–97d), Wh-Movement would also lead to violation of further constraints (in addition to CED). For example, extraction of the subject of the bracketed clause in (97b) would lead to a criterial freezing violation because the subject of a complete (nontruncated) clause occupies its criterial position (spec-SUBJP/spec-TP) and is frozen in place by the Criterial Freezing Condition (21). In the case of (97c, 97d), Wh-Movement would lead to violation of the Freezing Principle of Wexler and Culicover (1980: 119) because the bracketed constituents have been fronted, and the principle freezes the elements of a moved constituent in place and so bars extraction. And in the case of (97d), extraction of which out of a how-clause would also violate the Intervention Condition (preventing likes from crossing likes). Thus, sentences like (97) show us that a movement analysis for relative clauses containing pronominal resumptives would lead to violation of (one or more) syntactic constraints in cases where syntactically inaccessible constituents are being relativised. By contrast, a Merge analysis (under which antecedent, relativiser and resumptive are merged independently of each other, in separate positions) avoids this problem, since no movement takes place from the resumptive position to the relativiser or antecedent positions. Before concluding this section, I will briefly consider a class of potential counterexamples to the Merge analysis, relating to structures like those in (59) above, which appear to involve pied-piping. Representative examples of the types of structure involved are repeated in (99):
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110 (99)
Resumptive Relatives a. There may be several of them, [one of which we know where it is] (=59a) b. He was working with the spinners, [of whom which of them they will select remains a mystery] (=59d) c. It’s good for making contacts – especially this lady [whose mother I stayed out at her house] (=59f)
In these sentences, it might at first sight appear as if which/whose/whom have undergone Wh-Movement to the front of the relative clause and pied-piped the bold-printed material along with them. If we take pied-piping as a diagnostic of movement, such examples would seem to suggest that pronominal resumptive structures involve Move rather than Merge – contrary to what is argued here. Nevertheless, closer reflection leads to the conclusion that a movement analysis of such structures would be extremely problematic. For example, under a stranding analysis, the bracketed relative clause in (99a) would seemingly involve one of which originating as the complement of it and then moving via Wh-Movement to the edge of the relative clause, thereby stranding it in situ and deriving the simplified structure below (in which only the initial and final positions of the phrase one of which are shown): (100)
[RELP one of which we know [FORCEP where [DP it one of which] is where]]
However, the relevant movement operation would violate the Intervention Condition (which prevents likes from crossing likes) by moving one of which across where, and would violate the Criterial Freezing Condition because the bracketed DP occupies a criterial subject position and so is frozen in place. Moreover, a movement analysis is even more problematic in the case of (99b): it would seemingly require us to suppose that of whom originates as the complement of which and then undergoes the Wh-Movement operation shown in simplified form below: (101)
[RELP of whom [FORCEP which of whom they will select] remains a mystery]
However, such a derivation induces multiple constraint violations (in that the PP of whom is extracted out of a fronted wh-phrase occupying a peripheral specifier position in an interrogative clause, so violating the Condition on Extraction Domains, the Intervention Condition, and the Freezing Principle). Moreover, it also leaves unanswered the question of how the lower copy of whom comes to be spelled out as them. In addition, a movement analysis is also hugely problematic for structures like (99c). Under (one implementation of) the stranding analysis, whose mother
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would originate as the complement of her and from there move via WhMovement to the edge of RELP, so stranding her and deriving the structure below (where ø denotes a null determiner): (102)
[RELP whose mother [FORCEP I stayed at [DP her whose mother ø house]]]
However, such a movement derivation would involve extracting whose mother out of the phrase her whose mother, and this would violate the Constraint on Extraction Domains/CED, since her whose mother is the specifier of the bracketed DP in (102), and CED only allows extraction out of complements (not out of specifiers). It would also violate the Left Branch Condition, which freezes in place constituents which are on the left branch of a nominal. Moreover, since the genitive s-form whose mother’s is required when modifying a noun (as in whose mother’s house), such an analysis would leave unanswered the question of why we find whose mother (and not whose mother’s) in (99c). Having shown that a movement analysis is untenable for apparent cases of pied-piping in sentences like (99) above, I will now go on to show that a Merge analysis can provide a more principled account of such structures. Under a Merge analysis, the appositive relative clause in (99a) above would have the structure below: (103)
[RELP one of which we know [FORCEP where it is]]
The wh-phrase one of which would be generated in situ, just like one of them in the dislocated topic structure below: (104)
One of them, we know where it is
The resumptive pronoun it in (103, 104) would be generated independently as the subject of the where-clause. There is no constraint violation in either case, since nothing is extracted out of the where-clause. The underlined dislocated phrase in (103, 104) can be paraphrased as ‘in relation to one of which/them I would say that . . . ’. Since dislocated constituents are typically offset from the rest of the clause, we generally find a perceptible intonation break after the underlined constituent in both types of structure. Now consider how (99b) would be handled under the Merge analysis. Broekhuis (2006) and Jurka (2010) argue that clause-initial orphaned PPs associated with a clause-internal DP are base-generated. Broekhuis (2006: 62) claims that the PP in such cases is ‘an independent adverbial phrase’, while Jurka (2010: 157) argues that the PP is ‘base-generated as some sort of hanging topic or aboutness construction in the C-domain’. One way of
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Resumptive Relatives
extending this analysis to (99b) would be to suppose that the PP of whom is generated on the edge of RELP, so that the relative clause has the structure below: (105)
[RELP of whom [FORCEP which of them they will select] remains a mystery]
However, another possibility is that such structures arise as a blend (Bolinger 1961; Fay 1981; Stemberger 1982; Cohen 1987; Cutting & Bock 1997; Coppock 2006, 2010) or amalgam (Zwicky 2002) of colloquial and formal structures, perhaps because the sports commentator who produced (99b) was trying to ‘talk posh’. If so, (99b) could be a blend between the colloquial resumptive relative structure bracketed in (106a) below, and the formal gap structure in (106b): (106)
a. He was working with the spinners, [who, which of them they will select remains a mystery] b. He was working with the spinners, [of whom which ― they will select remains a mystery]
The resulting blend produces a relative clause structure like that bracketed in (105) which begins like the gap relative in (106b) and ends like the resumptive relative in (106a). Given how rare such structures are, the idea that sentences like (99b) are the result of a sporadic production error involving a blend seems potentially plausible.29 Finally, consider (99c). Under the Merge analysis advocated here, the relative nominal it contains would have a structure along the following lines: (107)
[DP this [NP lady [RELP whose mother [FORCEP I stayed out at her house]]]]
Since the wh-phrase and the resumptive are merged in separate positions (with no movement from one position to the other) no violation of movement constraints can arise. Moreover, since the two are independent constituents, the case of the resumptive does not have to match that of whose, as we see from the constructed example below: (108)
I feel sorry for the bride, [whose mother, I have no idea why she wasn’t invited to the wedding]
Thus the overall conclusion we reach is that apparent cases of pied-piping like those in (99) above can be more straightforwardly accommodated within a Merge analysis than within a Move analysis. 29
Potential support for the view that (99b) is a blend which comes about when the commentator tries to ‘talk posh’ comes from the use of whom in (99b).
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To summarise: in this section, I have looked at relative clauses which contain various kinds of resumptive pronoun (not just personal pronouns, but also pronominal demonstratives, quantifiers, and adverbs). I have argued that each of these types of pronominal resumptive structure is more amenable to a Merge analysis than a Move analysis. But is this also the case with structures containing nominal resumptives? This is the question I turn to address in the next section. 2.6
Nominal Resumptives
As noted in the table in (63) above, my data contain 50 examples of resumptive relatives in which the resumptive is nominal in nature. In this section, I consider whether a Move analysis might be appropriate for some or all such structures, before going on to argue for a Merge analysis. Since there are a range of different types of nominal resumptive used in my data, I will look at each type in turn. As a starting point for discussion, consider kind relatives like the following, where the (underlined) resumptive contains a copy of the (italicised) noun in the antecedent: (109)
a. That was a game [that we should have put the game out of reach] (Mark Schwarzer, Sky Sports TV) b. I’m just worried that Liverpool are buying players [that the players don’t relate to the crowd] (Listener, BBC Radio 5) c. They’ve got a transfer committee [that people say ‘Well, why should you have a transfer committee?’] (John McGovern, BBC Radio 5) d. He dove at a ball [that I said to myself ‘He can’t get to that ball’] (Harry Keough, Talksport Radio) e. He’s got a temperament [that, if you don’t know him, a lot of people would dislike his temperament] (Listener, Talksport Radio) f. I hit shots [that I know I can hit shots] (Tiger Woods, BBC Radio 5)
Such sentences are amenable to various kinds of movement analysis, including one whereby the antecedent noun originates as the complement of a determiner occupying the resumptive position and then the antecedent undergoes an Antecedent Raising operation which moves it to the edge of the relative NP, thereby stranding the determiner in situ. On one implementation of this idea, the relative nominal in (109a) above would have the structure shown below (simplified, inter alia, by showing only the initial and final positions of the highlighted raised antecedent): (110)
[ARTP a [NP game [RELP that we should have put [DP the game] out of reach]]]
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Resumptive Relatives
Although lower copies of moved constituents generally receive a null spellout unless there is some reason for them not to, it may be that the underlined copy of the raised antecedent is overtly spelled out because an article like the/a cannot be stranded with a null complement.30 However, this account raises the question of why the strandable determiners (i.e. pronouns) it/they should not have been used in place of the in (109a, 109b), and indeed why strandable one should not have been used in place of unstrandable a in (109c). Moreover, such an account will not generalise straightforwardly to examples like (109d–109f), since (e.g.) that is a strandable determiner (i.e. it can be used as a pronoun), so it would seem to be necessary to say that in such cases, the spelling out of the italicised lower copy of the noun is attributable to other factors (perhaps an accidental spellout error arising from a memory lapse, such as forgetting that the that-clause is a relative clause rather than a complement clause). By contrast, no such spellout issues arise under a Merge analysis, on which the nominal in (109a) above has the structure shown in simplified form below (where SUCH is a null kind relativiser in spec-RELP): (111)
[ARTP a [NP game [RELP SUCH that [FORCEP we should have put [DP the game] out of reach]]]]
Under the Merge analysis, the italicised antecedent game, the kind relativiser SUCH and the underlined resumptive DP the game are all merged in situ, and the structure in (111) has an interpretation paraphrasable as ‘a game of such a kind that we should have put the game out of reach’. Alongside that-clauses with nominal resumptives like those in (109) above, we also find kind relatives like those in (112) below which contain an (italicised) wh-relativiser rather than that:
30
This approach could be extended to handle the one-off structure below: (i)
‘Punch Drunk’ is [the one that I will stand by that film] (Mark Kermode, BBC Radio 5)
if a copy of the noun film raises from the underlined position into the italicised antecedent position below (where NUMP designates a phrase headed by a numeral): (ii) [DP the [NUMP one [NP film [RELP that I will stand by [DP that film]]]]] and if the italicised higher copy (exceptionally) receives a silent spellout at PF. Interestingly, McKee & McDaniel (2001:144) treat resumptive nominals as sporadic speech errors which arise because ‘When the production system is floundering or losing track of the filler–gap relation, the head of the relative clause is repeated, taking the form of a full resumptive NP’.
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2.6 Nominal Resumptives (112)
115
a. I made recommendations in 1987 [which, if the recommendations had been followed, there wouldn’t have been any further outbreak of E.coli] (Food scientist, BBC Radio 5) b. There were meetings here in Woking [which Professor Leon attended those meetings] (Reporter, BBC World Service) c. Next we’ll be talking about players [who newspapers outside this country are linking players with clubs in this country] (Danny Kelly, Talksport Radio) d. That implies a cost [which, if you had a healthier life style, we could reduce that cost] (Doctor, BBC Radio 5) e. He’s got this lifelong friend [who he takes money from the parish to give to this lifelong friend] (Pat at Cheeze Pleeze, Kroch corpus) f. On Monday it’s Ipswich against Millwall, [who, Millwall are doing well, aren’t they?] (Alan Brazil, Talksport Radio)
If which/who are relative determiners, we could perhaps envisage a movement derivation for such sentences whereby (e.g.) the wh-DP this who lifelong friend in (112e) originates in the resumptive position and then who lifelong friend moves from there to the edge of RELP by Wh-Movement, with the NP lifelong friend subsequently being raised into the antecedent position by Antecedent Raising – as shown in simplified form below: (113)
ANTECEDENT RAISING [DP this [NP lifelong friend [RELP who lifelong friend he takes money from the parish to give to [DP this who lifelong friend]]]] WH-MOVEMENT
This would clearly require some spellout magic to make it work, in order to ensure that both the highest and lowest copies of the NP lifelong friend are spelled out overtly, but that only the higher copy of who receives an overt spellout (perhaps because the higher copy of who is in an A-bar position, but the lower copy is not). However, while a movement derivation involving Antecedent Raising might conceivably be made to work for sentences like those in (112) above, it cannot be extended to resumptive appositives like those bracketed below, since (as we saw in §1.6) appositives don’t involve Antecedent Raising: (114)
a. There is a big problem for the centre-left, [which Corbyn is trying to find a solution to the problem] (Lord Wood, BBC Radio 4) b. I believe you called me on the teal car, [which we have that car in the back room] (Car dealer, Discovery TV)
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116
Resumptive Relatives c. Are we on the status below critical, [which I’m sure Chris can confirm what that status is]? (Tessa Dunlop, BBC Radio 5) d. There was a right turn, [which I was gonna take the right turn] (Martha Kroch, Kroch corpus) e. Avram Grant is from Israel, [which, if you go to Israel during Yom Kippur, there are no cars on the road] (Nick Cosgrove, BBC Radio 5) f. We mustn’t forget Steven Gerrard, [who nobody’s talking about Steven Gerrard] (Paddy Barclay, BBC Radio 5)
Still, an alternative movement analysis could be proposed for sentences like those in (114) based on Wh-Movement alone. For example, we might suppose that the DP the which problem originates as the complement of the preposition to in (114a), and then undergoes Wh-Movement to the edge of RELP, as shown below: (115)
[RELP the which problem [FORCEP Corbyn is trying to find a solution to [DP the which problem]]]
Spellout rules for the DP the which problem would specify that the wh-constituent which is spelled out overtly in its (bold-printed) superficial position, and the other constituents of the DP are spelled out in their (italicised) initial positions. Such an analysis could be extended to kind wh-relatives like those in (112) if we adopted a matching analysis under which the (underlined) antecedent is generated in situ, and a matching (italicised) copy of the antecedent is generated inside the fronted wh-phrase, as shown for (112a) in simplified form below: (116)
I made recommendations in 1987 [RELP which recommendations, if the which recommendations had been followed, there wouldn’t have been any further outbreak of E.coli]
We could then suppose that only the highest (bold-printed) copy of which is spelled out overtly at PF, and that the copy of the noun recommendations is deleted after which but spelled out overtly after the because which is strandable but the is not. Thus far, I have argued that relative clauses which contain nominal resumptives like those italicised in (109, 112, 114) above can be given a movement derivation involving Wh-Movement and/or Antecedent Raising, albeit only if we make certain (abstract and potentially controversial) assumptions, and posit some unusual (and patently ad hoc) spellout rules. However, it should be noted that the relevant structures can be given what is arguably a more straightforward Merge analysis. For example, the relative clause in (109a) can be given
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2.6 Nominal Resumptives
117
the Merge analysis in (111) above, and the relative clauses in (112e/114a) can be given the respective Merge analyses in (117a/117b) below: (117)
a. He’s got this lifelong friend [RELP who [FORCEP he takes money from the parish to give to [DP this lifelong friend]]] b. There is a big problem for the centre-left, [RELP which [FORCEP Corbyn is trying to find a solution to [DP the problem]]]
In (117a), the relativiser who has a kind interpretation (paraphrasable as ‘of such a kind (that)’, while in (117b) which has a topic-like interpretation paraphrasable as ‘about which I would comment that’. In both cases, the underlined resumptive DP has the same anaphoric use as we find in structures like: (118)
There is a big problem for the centre-left, and Corbyn is trying to find a solution to the problem
Thus, the conclusion we reach is that in principle, nominal resumptive relative structures like those in (109, 112, 114) above could in principle be given either a Merge or a Move analysis (albeit the Merge analysis seems more straightforward). However, there are other nominal resumptive relatives for which a movement analysis proves more problematic. Consider, for example, the appositive relative clauses bracketed below: (119)
a. Then you’ve got people like Billy Bonds, [who I loved Billy as a player] (Julian Dicks, Talksport Radio) b. We need to have units round the country, [which we now have these new counter-terrorist units] (Police spokesperson, BBC Radio 5) c. This information is asked for on the census form, [which they threaten to fine you up to a thousand pounds if you don’t fill the thing in] (Civil liberty spokesman, BBC Radio 5) d. He’s up against Robredo, [who, five times the veteran Spaniard has made the quarter-finals (Tennis correspondent, BBC Radio 5) e. He whacked it past the goalkeeper, [who probably Sean Derry’s wife could do a better job in goal than this guy] (Ian Abrahams, Talksport Radio) f. You could snap someone’s leg in half, [which we’ve seen plenty of them injuries] (Darren Gough, Talksport Radio)
The problem here is that the underlined resumptive nominal is not an identical copy of the italicised antecedent. To be more specific, the resumptive is smaller than the antecedent in (119a), larger than the antecedent in (119b), and entirely distinct from the antecedent in (119c–119f) – and indeed in (119f), the antecedent is not nominal but rather clausal. Clearly, this undermines any
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118
Resumptive Relatives
movement analysis which involves fronting a wh-phrase comprising who/ which and a matching copy of the antecedent. Still, we need to bear in mind here the observation made by McCawley (1981: 118) that appositives can contain a nominal which is distinct from that in the antecedent in sentences such as the following:31 (120)
Mark belongs to the Knights of Columbus, [which organisation has been condemned by the Jewish Defense League]
This suggests that it may not be the movement analysis in itself which is problematic in sentences like (119, 120), but rather the matching condition (i.e. the requirement for antecedent and resumptive to match). If we relax the matching requirement, we can still defend a movement analysis for sentences like those in (119) under which (for example) the relative clause in (119f) would involve the Wh-Movement operation arrowed below (where them which injuries has a meaning paraphrasable as ‘the aforementioned injuries’): (121)
[RELP which injuries [FORCEP we’ve seen plenty of [DP them which injuries]]]
On this view, the wh-phrase which injuries originates as the complement of the determiner them and is wh-moved to the edge of RELP, leaving the determiner them stranded in situ. If spellout rules specify that which is spelled out overtly in the position in which it ends up but injuries is spelled out in the position in which it originates, the structure in (121) will be spelled out as the string which we’ve seen plenty of them injuries. If we go down this road, appositive clauses like those in (119) above which involve an antecedent–resumptive mismatch can still be given a movement analysis. However, alongside mismatching appositives like those in (121) above, we also find mismatching kind relatives like those below: (122)
31
a. Newcastle and Spurs in particular are the two clubs [that he knows the club] (Jason Cundy, Talksport Radio) b. Were there managers [that you left the club because you didn’t get on with the manager]? (Andy Goldstein, Talksport Radio) c. This is a shirt [that there’s not too many heavier than a Liverpool shirt] (Brendan Rogers, Talksport Radio)
See also Jespersen (1949: 126–8), Kayne (1994: 165, fn. 73), Arnold (2007: 289), and Cinque (2008: 113). Note, however, that structures like (120) are esoteric and archaic in nature, and do not occur in colloquial English.
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2.6 Nominal Resumptives
119
d. He also came out with things [which, when you’ve got sensitive owners like those in Italy, you can’t say the things that he said] (Eleanor Oldroyd, BBC Radio 5) e. This is a player [who, you can’t say that we’ve failed just because we’ve included Frank Lampard] (Adrian Durham, Talksport Radio)
In (122a, 122b), there is a number mismatch between the singular resumptive noun club/manager and the plural antecedent noun clubs/managers. In (122c, 122d), the resumptive nominals a Liverpool shirt/the things that he said are larger than the antecedents shirt/thing, albeit the two contain the same noun. And in (122e), the resumptive and antecedent are entirely distinct nominals, with not even a shared noun in common. An Antecedent Raising derivation seems implausible for such cases. For example, in (122a, 122b), such an analysis would not account for why resumptive and antecedent differ in number. In (122c), any proposal to antecedent-raise a copy of the noun shirt out of the nominal a Liverpool shirt would violate Ross’s (1967) Left Branch Condition, if this specifies that a noun cannot be separated from any left branch modifiers it has – and a similar point could be made in relation to (122d). As for (122e), an Antecedent Raising derivation is clearly untenable, since antecedent and resumptive are entirely distinct. The conclusion to be drawn from the considerations in the previous paragraph is that if a movement analysis is to be defended for structures like those in (122), it will have to be based on Wh-Movement of a resumptive wh-phrase to the edge of RELP. And yet, it is far from clear how such an analysis would work. For example, are we going to claim that (122d) involves the phrase the which things that he said being generated in the resumptive position, then the wh-phrase which things that he said undergoing Wh-Movement to the edge of RELP? This will require an awful lot of (essentially ad hoc) spellout magic in order to ensure that which is spelled out on the edge of RELP, and the remaining constituents of the fronted whphrase are spelled out in the resumptive position. By contrast, a Merge analysis on which antecedent, relativiser and resumptive are merged in separate positions seems much more straightforward. Under such an analysis, the relative nominal in (122c) would have the structure shown below: (123)
[ARTP a [NP shirt [RELP SUCH that [FORCEP there’s not too many heavier than a Liverpool shirt]]]]
The antecedent noun shirt would be merged in situ in the antecedent position outside the relative clause; a null kind relativiser (denoted as SUCH) would be
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120 Resumptive Relatives merged on the edge of RELP, serving as the specifier of the REL head that; and the resumptive nominal a Liverpool shirt would be merged in situ as the complement of than. In the case of a sentence like (122e), we find an overt relativiser who and null complementiser ø used on the edge of RELP, so that the relativised nominal has the structure below under a Merge analysis: (124)
[ARTP a [NP player [RELP who ø [FORCEP you can’t say that we’ve failed just because we’ve included Frank Lampard]]]]
The relativiser who is merged on the edge of RELP, has a kind interpretation ‘of such a kind (that)’ and carries default case. A significant advantage which a Merge analysis offers over a Move analysis is that it provides a principled account of why the wh-relativiser doesn’t piedpipe additional material along with it in a sentence like (119f) above (repeated as 125a below), if the bracketed appositive relative clause has the WhMovement derivation in (125b): (125)
a. You could snap someone’s leg in half, [which we’ve seen plenty of them injuries] b. [RELP which injuries [FORCEP we’ve seen plenty of [DP them which injuries]]]
This is mysterious under the Wh-Movement analysis in (125b), because which pied-pipes the noun injuries along with it when it undergoes Wh-Movement, and fronted constituents are normally spelled out in the position they end up in. Consequently, it’s not at all clear why the noun injuries should not be spelled out (as below) in its superficial position on the edge of the bracketed relative clause: (126)
You could snap someone’s leg in half, [which injuries we’ve seen plenty of them ―]
After all, this is precisely the spellout pattern we find in English when interrogative phrases undergo Wh-Movement in sentences like those below: (127)
(a) Which injuries do players most suffer from ―? (b) *Which do players most suffer from ― injuries?
Thus, under the Wh-Movement analysis of resumptive relative structures like (123), it remains a mystery why material pied-piped along with which is not spelled out at the front of the relative clause (as in 125a). By contrast, this can be given a straightforward account under a Merge analysis in which the relative clause in (119f/125a) has the structure below
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2.6 Nominal Resumptives
121
(with both the italicised relativiser and the underlined resumptive being merged in situ): (128)
You could snap someone’s leg in half, [RELP which [FORCEP we’ve seen plenty of [DP them injuries]]]
Under the Merge analysis in (128), the sentence would have a topical interpretation paraphrasable as ‘You could snap someone’s leg in half, about which I would comment that we’ve seen plenty of injuries like that’. Since relative which can function as a pronoun in colloquial English (as in 128), but not as a determiner (as in 126), it follows from the Merge analysis that (128) will be used rather than (126).32 Thus, once again, a Merge analysis proves more straightforward than a Move analysis. A final piece of evidence against movement analyses of relative clauses with nominal resumptives is that they are not sensitive to constraints on movement operations – as can be illustrated by examples such as the following: (129)
a. He dove at a ball [that I said to myself ‘He can’t get to that ball’] (Harry Keough, Talksport Radio) b. This is a shirt [that there’s not too many heavier than a Liverpool shirt] (Brendan Rogers, Talksport Radio) c. He’s got a temperament [that, if you don’t know him, a lot of people would dislike his temperament] (Listener, Talksport Radio) d. I made recommendations in 1987 [which, if the recommendations had been followed, there wouldn’t have been any further outbreak of E.coli] (Food scientist, BBC Radio 5) e. Then we had Steve McClaren, [who, do you know what the thing about Steve McClaren was?] (Steve Claridge, BBC Radio 5)
An Antecedent Raising analysis for (129a) under which a copy of the noun ball moves from the italicised resumptive position into the underlined
32
It should be noted that we find which used as a determiner in appositive relatives like those bracketed below: (i)
There was a loud explosion, [at which point everyone dived for cover] (Radford 2016: 422) (ii) There may be some bleeding after the operation, [in which case you should contact your doctor] However, this use is not characteristic of colloquial English, and in any case it is restricted to a handful of PPs which are essentially set phrases – hence the ungainliness of: (iii) He played in a testimonial last year, [after which game he retired]
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122 Resumptive Relatives antecedent position would lead to violation of the Quotative Island Constraint, since this bars extraction out of directly quoted speech. Moreover, it would also violate the Left Branch Condition/LBC of Ross (1967), if this specifies that a noun and its left branch modifiers are frozen/ inseparable, since this would prevent ball from being extracted out of the DP that ball. Similarly, LBC would prevent the nouns shirt/temperament from undergoing Antecedent Raising and thereby being extracted out of the phrases a Liverpool shirt/his temperament/the recommendations in (129b, 129c, 129d). In the same way, LBC would also prevent which from undergoing Wh-Movement and being extracted out of the phrase the which recommendations in (129d), and any such movement would also violate the Constraint on Extraction Domains/CED (because which is moved out of a clause which is the specifier of a peripheral MODP projection), and the Criterial Freezing Condition (because the phrase the which recommendations occupies a criterial subject position). In addition, extracting who in (129e) out of the phrase who Steve McClaren would violate not only LBC, but also CED (because who is extracted out of the subject/specifier the thing about who Steve McClaren), and the Intervention Condition (because who is extracted out of a what-clause – and moreover out of a yes-no question clause inside which the what-clause is embedded). There is no point in multiplying details here: it is clear that any kind of movement analysis of resumptive nominals is going to lead to massive constraint violations. As should be self-evident, no such constraint violations arise under a Merge analysis. To summarise: our discussion in this section of the derivation of relative clauses containing nominal resumptives has shown that a movement analysis (whether involving Wh-Movement, Antecedent Raising, or a combination of the two) involves considerable abstraction and ad hoc spellout machinery, and fails to provide a principled account of the full range and properties of the nominal resumptive structures found in my data. Conversely, however, all the relevant structures can be accommodated fairly straightforwardly within a Merge analysis. Since in the previous section I drew the same conclusion about the use of pronominal resumptives, the overall conclusion to be drawn is that all resumptive relatives in English (whether involving the use of nominal or pronominal resumptives) have a Merge derivation in which antecedent, relativiser and resumptive are independently generated in separate positions.
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2.7 Relative and Topic Structures 2.7
123
Relative and Topic Structures
In this section, I discuss potential parallels between resumptive relative and dislocated topic structures.33 As the examples below (and the more extensive discussion in Radford 2018: ch. 2) illustrate, dislocated topics in colloquial English can be associated with much the same range of resumptive constituents as are found in relative clauses. For example, we find essentially the same range of pronominal resumptives in dislocated topic structures as in resumptive relatives, including personal pronouns like they/his in (130a, 130b) below, demonstrative pronouns like that in (130c) and locative there in (130d), and pronominal quantifiers like any in (130e): (130)
a. The person that I mentioned the name of, the police know who they were (Listener, BBC Radio 5) b. Lee, I’ve been following his progress very much over the last month (Colin Montgomerie, BBC Radio 5) c. Ray Wilkins’ departure last week, much has been made of that (Gabby Logan, BBC Radio 5) d. The memorial, I was there a few hours ago (Peter Bowles, BBC Radio 5) e. Olympic events, are you going to any? (Ronnie Irani, Talksport Radio)
We also find the same range of resumptive nominals in topic structures as in relatives, including fully or partially matching names like those underlined in (131a, 131b) below, fully or partially matching common noun expressions like those underlined in (131c, 131d), and entirely distinct (non-matching) nominals like those underlined in (131e, 131f): (131)
33
a. Murray, there’s something about Murray at the moment (Barry Flatman, Talksport Radio) b. Danny, I’m sure there’s lots of football to come out of Danny Welbeck (Ray Wilkins, Talksport Radio) c. The house, we’re only about 50 feet away from the house (Julie Hobson, BBC Radio 5) d. The pressure that you were under today, your players are going to have to face that kind of pressure throughout the season (Connor MacNamara, BBC Radio 5) e. The championship, one of the greatest things about that league is that it’s the most unpredictable league around (Listener, BBC Radio 5) f. Hamilton, the pendulum swings back into the Englishman’s favour (David Croft, Sky Sports TV)
Potential similarities between relative and topic clauses have been noted in earlier research, including Kuno (1973, 1976), Chomsky (1977), Douglas (2016), and Radford (2018).
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124 Resumptive Relatives There are other parallels, too, between dislocated topic structures and resumptive relatives in colloquial English, one of which is illustrated below: (132)
a. I had this friend who we used to go out . . . (Susan Michini, Kroch corpus) b. A mate of mine, we were trying to leave (Jason Cundy, Talksport Radio)
In both cases, the reference of the resumptive includes both the speaker and the friend mentioned in the antecedent/topic. Moreover, both types of structure can have an aboutness interpretation, as illustrated below: (133)
a. In lane 8 on the outside is the Ethiopian Magiso, who, it’s her birthday today, actually (=66b) b. The Ethiopian Magiso, it’s her birthday today (constructed example)
Thus, the relative pronoun who in (133a) has a meaning paraphrasable as ‘talking of whom’, and the topic the Ethiopian Magiso can be give much the same ‘talking of . . . ’ paraphrase in (133b). In addition, like topics, relativisers in resumptive relatives are typically set off from the rest of the clause by an intonation boundary marked in the spelling by a comma – as illustrated in (133). And topic structures further resemble relatives in that both allow for an alternative movement derivation which leaves a gap behind, e.g. in sentences such as: (134)
a. Paul Pogba is someone [who I really like ― as a player] b. Paul Pogba, I really like ― as a player
Thus, just as the relative pronoun who moves to the edge of the relative clause in (134a) and leaves a gap behind at its extraction site, so too the topic Paul Pogba moves to the edge of the topic clause and leaves a gap behind in (134b). The potential structural parallelism between topic and relative clauses leads Douglas (2016: 86) to conjecture that ‘relativisation and topicalisation target the same structural position(s)’, and more specifically that relative whconstituents are ‘located in specTopP’.34 He goes on (2016: 99) to suggest analysing ‘finite wh- and that-RCs as TopPs rather than ForcePs’. If this applies equally to gap and resumptive relatives, the relativised nominal bracketed in (135a) below will have a structure along the lines shown in (135b):35 34
35
It should be noted, however, that Douglas suggests the alternative possibility that relativisers are positioned on the edge of FORCEP. See §1.3 for a discussion and critique of this idea. Douglas suggests that the projection labelled NP in (135b) is actually a projection of a RELATOR head (2016: 102), or perhaps of a FORCE head (2016: 103).
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2.7 Relative and Topic Structures (135)
125
a. There are [some people who, they can’t stand criticism] b. [QP some [NP people [TOPP who [FINP they can’t stand criticism]]]]
This would mean that there is structural parallelism between relative clauses like that bracketed in (135a) above, and dislocated topic structures like that below: (136)
People like that, they can’t stand criticism
Just as the (bold-printed) dislocated topic people like that is on the edge of TOPP in (136), so too the relative pronoun who is positioned on the edge of TOPP in (133). We might then suppose that the clause in (135b) is typed as relative by virtue of having a relative pronoun like who on the edge of the highest projection in the clause periphery, and is interpreted as declarative in force by default (see Chapter 1, fn. 13). However, a topic analysis like (135b) is potentially problematic in a number of respects. For one thing, relative pronouns have a kind interpretation (not a topic interpretation) in relatives like (135). Moreover, (135b) is incompatible with the claim made by Rizzi (1997) that topics only occur in complete (nontruncated) clauses whose periphery contains a superordinate FORCEP projection. The topic analysis is further undermined by the observation that relative pronouns and topics have different distributions. Thus, an (italicised) topic is typically positioned below a (bold-printed) FORCE head like declarative that, as we see from sentences such as: (137)
a. John said that this book, Mary should have read (Watanabe 1993: 127; A16a) b. *John said this book, that Mary should have read (Watanabe 1993: 127; A16b)
By contrast, relative pronouns are positioned above FORCEP, and thus (in kind and appositive relatives) can precede a non-declarative FORCEP which has the force of (e.g.) a wh-question in sentences like (138a, 138b) below, a yes-no question in (138c, 138d), and a hortative in (138e): (138)
a. Then you launched these podcasts, [which, how many times have these been downloaded]? (Richard Bacon, BBC Radio 5) b. One of the Premier League clubs is talking about closing down its academy, [which, how would you react to that?] (Ray Parlour, Talksport Radio) c. Should they commit that amount of money on a player [who, can he guarantee to keep you up?] (Adrian Durham, Talksport Radio)
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126 Resumptive Relatives d. And now it’s a corner, [which, can they get one in the back of the net?] (Nigel Spackman, Channel 5 TV) e. There’s a little bit of a trend there, [which, let’s hope that continues] (Listener, Talksport Radio)
This suggests that the relative pronoun in such cases is positioned above FORCEP, so that the relative clause in (138a) above has the immediate constituent structure bracketed below: (139)
Then you launched these podcasts, [RELP which [FORCEP how many times have these been downloaded?]]
Recall from the discussion in §1.3 that Rizzi (2015a) takes the range and order of projections that can occur in the periphery to be as follows (with a star indicating that one or more projections of the relevant kind can occur in the relevant position): (140)
FORCEP > TOPP* > INTP > TOPP* > FOCP > TOPP* > MODP* > TOPP* > FINP
The analysis in (139) in conjunction with the template in (140) predicts that dislocated topics will always be positioned after/below relative pronouns – and this is indeed the case, as we see from relative clauses like those bracketed below (where the relative pronoun in each example is italicised and the topic underlined): (141)
a. It’s one of them situations now [where, Harry, what does he do?] (Ray Parlour, Talksport Radio) b. Joe Hart has come out to look at the wall, [which, Negredo, is he gonna join?] (Clive Tyldesley, Sky Sports TV) c. There are a lot of very small ones [which, the critics, they might want to sneer at] (Political correspondent, BBC Radio 5) d. It’s the story of a woman [who, actually, her parents, she goes to rescue them] (Bishop Steven Lowe, BBC Radio 5) e. There are some people [who, compromising in this way, they are not happy about it] (Blogger, BBC Radio 5)
The fact that the underlined topics follow the italicised relative pronouns (but the converse ordering is not attested in my data) suggests that topics and relative pronouns are separate types of constituent occupying different positions in the periphery. Given the assumptions made here, the relative clause in (141a) will have a peripheral structure along the lines shown below: (142)
[RELP where [FORCEP ø [TOPP Harry [FOCP what [FINP does he do]]]]]
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127
Thus, the relative pronoun where will be positioned on the edge of a RELP projection above FORCEP, while the topic Harry will be positioned on the edge of a TOPP projection below FORCEP.36, 37 The topic analysis of relativisers seems even more problematic in relation to that-relatives like that bracketed below: (143)
They have got a couple of star players [that you’ve got to try and stop them getting the ball] (Gary Neville, Sky Sports)
Under one implementation of the TOPP analysis, the complementiser that will occupy the head TOP position of TOPP, and have a null relative wh-pronoun (WH) as its specifier – as shown below: (144)
They have got a couple of star players [TOPP WH that [FINP you’ve got to try and stop them getting the ball]]
However, such an analysis poses two problems. One is that the complementiser that is canonically used to spell out a (declarative) FORCE head in English, not a TOP head. The second is that TOPP projections require an overt specifier in English (because English is not a topic-drop language), and for this reason a relative structure like (144) is problematic because TOPP has a null specifier.38 36
37
Although the examples in (141a–141c) aren’t resumptive relatives, they have resumptive counterparts like the constructed examples below: (i) It’s a situation [which, Harry, what on earth could he have done about it?] (ii) Joe Hart has come out to look at the wall, [which, Negredo, is he gonna join it?] (iii) There are a lot of very small ones [which, the critics, they might want to sneer at them] An interesting question raised by the analysis in (142) is how to analyse sentences such as the following: (i) Salah, what a chance he has! (Gary Neville, Sky Sports TV) (ii) That money, what’s going to be done with it? (Matt Scott, Talksport Radio)
38
One possibility is to treat the italicised dislocated topic as positioned outside/above the exclamative/interrogative FORCEP, in a superordinate projection corresponding to the HP projection of a discourse head in Cinque (2008) and Giorgi (2014), the ParP constituent of Griffiths & de Vries (2013), or the FrameP constituent of Haegeman & Greco (2016, 2017). However, an alternative possibility is to analyse the overall sentence as a FORCEP constituent containing a TOPP positioned above a projection containing the fronted exclamative/interrogative whconstituent (which may be FOCP in root questions, for example, or WHP in exclamatives). By contrast, as noted by Barbiers (2013), Dutch is a topic-drop language in the sense that it allows a topic like that italicised below to optionally have a null spellout: (i)
(Dat) zag ik toen that saw I then ‘That I didn’t see then’
niet not
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128 Resumptive Relatives Furthermore, there are two other differences between topics and relative pronouns which provide additional evidence against treating relative pronouns as topics. Firstly, dislocated topics can occur in both root and embedded clauses, whereas relative pronouns can occur in embedded but not root clauses.39 Secondly, topics have independent reference, whereas relative pronouns don’t (but rather take their reference from their antecedent).40, 41 The overall conclusion to be reached from the foregoing discussion is that topics and relative pronouns occupy distinct positions in English. More specifically, topics are positioned on the edge of a topic projection/TOPP below FORCEP, whereas relative pronouns are positioned on the edge of a separate relative projection/RELP above FORCEP, with RELP being the highest projection in the periphery of a relative clause. However, the conclusion that relative pronouns occupy a separate position from topics raises the question of why relative pronouns and topics should share certain properties in common. For example, both can give rise to either a gap structure or a resumptive structure – as illustrated below: (145)
a. Lionel Messi, everyone respects him/― as a player (topic structure) b. He’s someone who, everyone respects him/― as a player (relative structure)
How can we account for this parallelism if topics and relativisers occupy different positions (on the edge of TOPP and RELP respectively)? A plausible answer is that the essence of these common properties is that TOPP and RELP are both peripheral projections, and the specifier of 39
However, I came across the following examples of which-clauses seemingly treated as independent sentences: (i)
It’s better than the HTC-made Nexus 9 which was great but not exceptional. Which the ‘C’ most certainly is (techadvisor.co.uk, review of Pixel C tablet) (ii) . . . the 500 is light enough to ensure its little engines feel muscular, and it encourages you to rev them like you would a Mediterranean hire car. Which there’s every chance one of these will end up being (Top Gear magazine, review of Fiat 500, summer 2018)
40 41
However, the use of a full-stop may simply be a punctuation device designed to emphasise that the relative clause is (in the terminology of Cinque 2008) non-integrated – i.e. not contained within a projection of its antecedent. A comma or hyphen could equally have been used. However, topics are linked to a discourse antecedent. Stanton (2016) notes the further difference that the object of a preposition like on can be relativised as in (i) below, but not topicalised as in (ii): (i) The days [that I go to class on] are Mondays and Wednesdays (ii) *Mondays, Audrey always goes to class on
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a peripheral projection can (in principle) be syntactically linked to the propositional component of its associated clause either via a Move operation which leaves a gap behind, or via two separate Merge operations, one of which directly generates the topic/relativiser in situ and the other of which generates an associated resumptive constituent lower down in the clause. Under (particular implementations of) the Move analysis, the topic Lionel Messi in (146a) below would originate as the complement of the verb respects and from there move to its criterial position on the edge of the the peripheral TOPP projection; likewise, the relative pronoun who in (146b) would originate as the complement of respects and from there move to its criterial position on the edge of RELP – as shown by the arrows below:42 (146)
a.
[FORCEP [TOPP Lionel Messi [FINP everyone respects — as a player]]]
b.
He’s someone [RELP who [FORCEP [FINP everyone respects — as a player]]]
By contrast, under the alternative Merge analysis, the italicised topic Lionel Messi would be directly merged in its criterial position on the edge of TOPP in (147a) below, the italicised relativiser who would likewise be directly merged in its own criterial position on the edge of RELP in (147b), and in both cases the underlined resumptive him would be directly merged as the complement of respects, as shown below: (147)
a. b.
[FORCEP ø [TOPP Lionel Messi [FINP everyone respects him as a player]]] He’s someone [RELP who [FORCEP ø [FINP everyone respects him as a player]]]
In order to satisfy Kuno’s (1976: 420) requirement that ‘A relative clause must be a statement about its head noun’, the resumptive pronoun him in both cases will be interpreted as bound by the italicised topic/relativiser. On this view, Move and Merge provide two different ways of relating a constituent in a peripheral projection to an appropriate position in the propositional component of the clause. However, it should be noted that independent factors may rule out certain possibilities in specific cases. For example, if wh-questions canonically involve a wh-operator binding a variable, and if resumptives are bound pronouns (not bound variables), it 42
I set aside various questions of implementation here, including what projections the moved constituent transits through on its way to its criterial position (e.g. whether it transits through the edge of vP and/or FINP on its way to its criterial position in the periphery), whether who is a relative pronoun or a relative determiner, and so on.
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130 Resumptive Relatives follows that we will only find gap-linked wh-questions, not resumptivelinked wh-questions.43
2.8
Summary
This chapter has been concerned with the syntax of resumptive relatives in colloquial English. I began by presenting an overview of existing research on resumptive relatives in §2.2, noting that much research has claimed that in English they are only used to relativise inaccessible constituents. In §2.3 I noted that there are many structures in my data in which resumptive relatives seem to be used to relativise constituents which are inaccessible to gap-creating movement operations either for syntactic reasons (because gap movement would give rise to violation of syntactic constraints), or for processing reasons (because gap movement would give rise to the formation of long-distance filler–gap dependencies which cause processing difficulties that can be alleviated by using a resumptive to refresh the dependency). However, I went on to show that a clear majority of the resumptives in my data are actually used to relativise accessible constituents – i.e. constituents that can be relativised by gap movement without violating any syntactic constraint or giving rise to any long-distance dependency. I concluded that resumptives in colloquial English can in principle be used to relativise any type of constituent (whether accessible or inaccessible). However, I noted that resumptive relatives are restricted to use in colloquial registers, whereas gap relatives are registerneutral. Consequently, in non-colloquial styles, gap relatives are preferred for relativising accessible constituents, and resumptives are likely to be stigmatised for register reasons. But when it comes to relativising inaccessible constituents in non-colloquial styles, there is a dilemma between using a gap structure which poses syntactic/processing problems and using a resumptive structure which poses register problems: since neither solution is optimal, it is not surprising that many experiments report low acceptability ratings for both (as we saw in §2.2). In §2.4 I looked at the nature of the relativisers used in resumptive relatives. I analysed that as a relative complementiser (occupying the head REL position of RELP), and argued that there are people who seem to treat where(by) as a kind-defining relative complementiser (used in essentially the same way as that, in both gap and resumptive relatives). In §2.5 I examined the derivation of relatives which involve the use of a pronominal resumptive, 43
However, it should be noted that we find sporadic examples of resumptive wh-questions in colloquial English, as illustrated in Chapter 2, fn. 3.
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and argued for a Merge analysis under which the antecedent, relativiser and resumptive are merged independently of each other in separate positions, and consequently have separate case properties. Likewise, in §2.6 I argued for a Merge analysis of nominal resumptive structures, on the grounds that the resumptive need not be an identical copy of the antecedent, but rather can be smaller or larger than (or entirely distinct from) the antecedent, and there may be a feature mismatch (e.g. in number) between antecedent and resumptive. In §2.7, I explored similarities between resumptive relative and dislocated topic structures, noting (e.g.) that both wh-relativisers and topics can either move to their criterial position in the periphery (leaving a gap behind) or be directly merged there and be associated with a resumptive in the propositional component of the clause. I further noted that both allow the same range of (pronominal and nominal) resumptives, and that both involve an intonation break after the relativiser/topic. I went on to consider the proposal by Douglas (2016) to handle these similarities by positing that the criterial position for both topics and relativisers is on the edge of TOPP, and that relative clauses are truncated TOPP structures which do not contain FORCEP. However, I argued against this analysis on numerous grounds, noting (e.g.) that resumptive relatives can be interrogative in force (and hence require a FORCEP projection), that relativisers and topics occupy different positions in the periphery, that relativisers can be null in English but topics can’t, and so on. Instead, I argued that the criterial position for topics is on the edge of a TOPP projection, whereas the criterial position for relativisers is on the edge of a higher RELP projection. Having explored the syntax of resumptive relatives in colloquial English in this chapter, in the next chapter I turn to look at two types of non-canonical prepositional relative which occur in colloquial English.
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3 Prepositional Relatives
3.1
Introduction
In standard varieties of English, the complement of a preposition can generally be relativised in any one of three different ways, as illustrated by the restrictive relative clauses bracketed below (where WH denotes a null relative pronoun): (1)
a. The man [who he was talking to ―] was his neighbour b. The man [to whom he was talking ―] was his neighbour c. The man [WH (that) he was talking to ―] was his neighbour
In structures in which an overt wh-relativiser like who(m) is used, the relativiser originates in the gap position as the complement of the preposition to and from there moves to the edge of RELP. In non-formal styles, the relativiser moves on its own as in (1a) above and is spelled out as who, whereas in formal styles the relativiser pied-pipes the preposition to along with it as in (1b) (Biber et al. 1999: 107), and is generally spelled out as whom (Schepps 2010: 8; but see also Hoffman 2005: 293, fn. 8). Alternatively, a null wh-relativiser (WH) can be used in place of who, and this moves on its own to the edge of a RELP projection with a REL head which can either be spelled out as that or be silent, as in (1c). In colloquial English, preposition pied-piping structures like (1b) are rare, and preposition stranding structures like (1a) and (1c) tend to be used instead.1 However, my principal concern in this chapter is not with the canonical prepositional relatives illustrated in (1), but rather with two types of non1
Numerous complications are set aside here to simplify exposition, including why only an overt wh-relativiser can be used in appositives, why only a null relativiser can co-occur with that, why a non-wh relativiser does not allow pied-piping, what positions the relativiser transits through when it moves, whether the relativiser is a pronoun or determiner, whether the structure does or doesn’t involve Antecedent Raising, how to account for the who/whom contrast, what sociolinguistic factors condition the use of wh- and wh-less relatives, and so on: see Chapter 1 for discussion of some of these issues.
132
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canonical prepositional relative structure used in colloquial English. One involves clauses like those bracketed in (2) below, which have been reported in numerous earlier studies dating back more than 40 years:2 (2)
a. They felt a person with a college education can handle more easily the problems that arise in the type of work [in which you are involved in] (Shaughnessy, 1977: 65) b. . . . some creeks [in which the backwater gets in] (Smith 1981: 311) c. Even fast-food restaurants are giving elderly Americans special rates [ for which the working American is paying for] (Free 1982: 309) d. A thing [of which I am afraid of ] is the maintenance effort to sort out the user input . . . (Googled example from Pullum 2007) e. The world [in which we live in] can be a frightening place (Jónsson 2008: 405) f. He declared that there were secret rites [in which he had never participated in] (Perrin 2009) g. Applicants are encouraged to identify a sponsor [with whom they are not currently working with] (Nykiel 2010: 159) h. . . . top managers [with whom they will be doing business with] (Hoffmann 2011: 113) i. The basic aim of moral philosophy is to come up with a standard principle [on which all moral judgments are based on] (example from student essay collected by Glenn Bingham, reported in Liberman 2014) j. He says that The Jackals, [with whom he has done ‘fast track bonding’ with], offer him stability after the unpredictability of The Libertines (example from The Independent Online cited in van Gysel 2015: 14) k. We’re the only people in Australia who have Floc, his home brew, [of which he has enormous barrels of . . . dating back from 2003] (Burke 2017: 364, fn. 7)
These illustrate a phenomenon widely referred to as ‘preposition doubling’ but alternatively characterised as involving ‘double prepositions’ (Riley & Parker 1986; Yáñez-Bouza 2007), ‘preposition copying’ (Radford 2004a), or ‘preposition reduplication’ (Jónsson 2008). In this type of structure, a (bold-printed) pied-piped preposition appears in the periphery of the relative clause in front of the (underlined) relative pronoun, and an (italicised) double/copy of the preposition is found in situ, in the position internally within the relative clause in which the preposition originates. Preposition doubling acquired wider 2
These include Shaughnessy (1977), Smith (1981), Free (1982), Riley & Parker (1986), Rudin (1986), Bergh (1998), Yáñez-Bouza (2007, 2014), Liberman (2007a, 2007b, 2007c, 2007d; 2014), Pullum (2007), Jónsson (2008), Staum Casasanto & Sag (2008a), Lee (2009), Perrin (2009), Nykiel (2010), Radford (2010a, 2010b), Hoffman (2011), Radford & Felser (2011), Radford, Felser & Boxell (2012), Armstrong & Mackenzie (2013), van Gysel (2015) and Burke (2017).
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134 Prepositional Relatives notoriety when it became the subject of a fervent online debate on the Language Log (languagelog.lds.upenn.edu) in May 2007 and again in April 2014, with notable contributions from Mark Liberman, Geoff Pullum, David Denison, Nuria Yáñez-Bouza, Catherine Rudin and many others. Alongside structures like those in (2) which contain an extra copy of the preposition whose object is being relativised, we also find relative clauses which contain what I shall call an intrusive preposition. By this, I mean they contain a fronted relative pronoun preceded by a (seemingly spurious) preposition which the relative pronoun appears not to be the complement of. Examples of in being used as an intrusive preposition in this way have been reported in a number of studies, as the relative clauses bracketed in the examples below illustrate: (3)
a. America . . . drove the Indians off land [in which was theirs] (Shaughnessy 1977: 6) b. . . . we usually do things that make us happy, such as eating food or having one more glass of wine, [in which we know is bad for us . . .] (example from a student assignment collected by Glenn Bingham, reported in Liberman 2014) c. I would absolutely refuse to ever do the same job [in which I had last summer] (Free 1982: 309) d. You can just about demand the price [in which you think you should receive] (Shaugnessy 1977: 64) e. For this assignment, I chose unicorns to be my mythological character [in which I am familiar with] (example from a student assignment collected by Glenn Bingham, reported in Liberman 2014) f. One of my fondest memories, [in which I came back to over and over] . . . (Free 1982: 309)
In these examples, which appears to relativise a local/non-local subject in (3a, 3b), a local/non-local verbal object in (3c, 3d), and the object of a preposition other than in in (3e, 3f). Standard varieties of English would not use intrusive in in such contexts, raising the question of what function it has. This chapter will be concerned with prepositional relatives that involve doubled and intrusive prepositions, and with evaluating a number of different accounts of these. I begin by looking at preposition doubling, outlining and evaluating two alternative syntactic analyses (a copying account in §3.2, and a splitting account in §3.3) before going on to investigate intrusive prepositions in §3.4. I then turn to present and evaluate a sociolinguistic account of preposition doubling in terms of hypercorrection in §3.5, before going on to look at processing accounts of preposition doubling and intrusion in §3.6 and presenting experimental evidence. I conclude the chapter with a brief summary of my main findings in §3.7.
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3.2 Preposition Doubling as Copying 3.2
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Preposition Doubling as Copying
Preposition doubling is a phenomenon which is reported to have occurred in earlier varieties of English dating back 800 years.3 Illustrative examples are given below (with 4a–4c taken from Bergh 1998 and 4d, 4f from Radford 2004a): (4)
a. yif ther be any thing to whiche that alle thinges tenden and hyen to, that thing muste ben the sovereyn good of alle goodes (Chaucer, 14th c.) b. so sawe they comen doun the hylle to hem chauntecler the cock and brought on a biere a deed henne of whom reynart had byten the heed of (Caxton, 15th c.) c. Behinde the Lunges, towarde the Spondels, passeth Mire or Isofagus, of whom it is spoken of in the Anatomie of the necke (Vicary, 16th c.) d. . . . that fair [ for which love gron’d for and would die] (Shakespeare, 16th c.) e. In what enormity is poor Marcius in? (Shakespeare, 16th c.) f. To what form but that he is should wit larded with malice and malice forced with wit turn him to? (Shakespeare, 16th c.)
Grimshaw (1975: 41–42) and Allen (1980: 229–30) take preposition doubling in such cases to arise as a result of a wh-PP being fronted and leaving a copy of the preposition behind at the original extraction site. This is in line with a more general copy-movement account of doubling phenomena proposed by Fay (1981) for sentences such as the following: (5)
a. Would you turn on the light on? (Fay 1981: 164) b. Are those are for the taking? (Fay 1981: 183)
Fay supposes that the derivation of such sentences involves a copymovement operation in which a copy of the italicised constituent is moved to a new position, and the original copy is not deleted. On Fay’s view, the particle on in (5a) originates immediately after the verb turn and then undergoes a Particle Postposing operation which moves it to a position after the object the light. And in (5b), the auxiliary are originates in a position immediately after the subject those and then undergoes an Auxiliary Inversion operation which moves it in front of the subject. Accordingly, sentences like those in (5) arise when the italicised copy of the moved constituent fails to be deleted (or, in more contemporary terms, fails to be given a null spellout in the PF component). Radford (2004a) extends the copy-movement account to preposition doubling in present-day English sentences like the following (from Radford 2004a: 192): 3
See Mustanoja (1960), Rydén (1966), Allen (1980), Denison (1985, 1993), Fischer (1992), Bergh (1998), Bergh & Seppanen (2000), Yáñez-Bouza (2007, 2014), and Nykiel (2010).
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136 Prepositional Relatives (6)
a. But if this ever-changing world [in which we live in] makes you give in and cry, say ‘Live and let die’ (Sir Paul McCartney, theme song from the James Bond film Live and Let Die)4 b. He goes down to the bunker [ from which he played his third shot from] (John Inverdale, BBC Radio 5) c. Israeli soldiers fired an anti-tank missile and hit a police post [in which the Palestinian policeman who was killed had been in] (News reporter, BBC Radio 5) d. The hearing mechanism is a peripheral, passive system [over which we have no control over] (undergraduate exam paper) e. It’s good to have a friend in times like these [on whom you can depend on] (Lyrics to a song by Alan Price) f. Tiger Woods, [about whom this Masters seems to be all about], is due to tee off shortly (Iain Carter, BBC Radio 5)
Utilising the CP account of the clause periphery, Radford (op. cit.) offers the following story about how preposition doubling arises in such structures: Let’s suppose that Wh-Movement . . . is a composite operation involving two suboperations of copying and deletion: the first stage is for a copy of the moved wh-expression to be moved into spec-CP; the second is for the original occurrence of the wh-expression to be deleted. From this perspective, preposition copying arises when the preposition at the original extraction site undergoes copying but not deletion (Radford 2004a: 193)
In more concrete terms, what this means is that the bracketed relative clause in (6f) will involve the copy-movement operation arrowed below: (7)
[CP about whom [TP this Masters seems to be all about whom]] WH-MOVEMENT
Subsequently, copy-deletion erases the lower (italicised) copy of whom, but not the lower (italicised) copy of the preposition about, thereby giving rise to the preposition doubling structure in (6f). The copy-movement analysis in (7) implicitly supposes that preposition doubling in relative clauses arises from Wh-Movement (and not from Antecedent Raising), since appositive relatives like (6f) involve the former 4
There was a debate on the Language Log in 2007 (e.g. Liberman 2007b) about whether (6a) really contains the string world in which we’re livin’ and thus is not an instance of preposition doubling at all. In an interview in the Washington Post (transcribed in Liberman 2014), Sir Paul admits to being uncertain about whether he sang ‘we live in’ or ‘we’re livin(g).’ In a post cited in Liberman (2014), one contributor commented ‘I have heard good examples of live recordings where it seems he has sung it both ways’.
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but not the latter. This assumption would appear to be borne out by the observation that doubling is also found in other types of structure involving Wh-Movement. In this connection, I would note that preposition doubling in my data occurs not only in appositive/restrictive/kind relatives like (6f/6b/6e) above, but also in root/embedded/sluiced wh-questions like those in (8a/8b/8c) below, in free relative clauses like those in (8d, 8e), and in wh-clefts like (8f): (8)
a. From which club did the Arsenal sign him from? (Alan Brazil, Talksport Radio) b. Find out where I am and in which country I’m in in just a moment (Nicki Chapman, BBC2 TV) c. All major parties have suspended political campaigning. I guess the question is, Chris: For how long for? (Nicky Campbell, BBC Radio 5) d. And to all our Aboriginal sisters and brothers, from wherever you may have come from, welcome (Stadium announcer, Sydney cricket ground, BBC Radio 5) e. He sent it straight back from where it came from (Michael Vaughan, Channel 5 TV) f. It is cricket to which we turn to this morning (Rachel Burden, BBC Radio 5)
Preposition doubling can plausibly be taken to arise from Wh-Movement in sentences like (6f, 8), albeit this requires a certain amount of abstraction in some cases (e.g. deriving 8e from a structure paraphrasable as ‘He sent it back TO THE PLACE from where it came from’, where capitals indicate items with a silent spellout). However, my data also include the two examples below of preposition doubling in non-wh clefts: (9)
a. I’m a Chelsea fan, but it’s not about Chelsea that I’ve phoned up about this evening (Listener, BBC Radio 5) b. It’s to Wimbledon, in a weird way, that we turn to next (Danny Kelly, Talksport Radio)
A copy-movement analysis of sentences like (9) would seemingly require us to suppose that preposition doubling arises from the fronting of a non-wh PP. In this connection, it is interesting to note that Bergh (1998: 8) reports that doubling was found in earlier varieties of English in clauses like that below which contain a fronted (non-wh) PP: (10)
Of love were liking of to here ‘Of love they wished to hear’ (c. 1185, Ipomedon)
The greater generalisation would thus seem to be that preposition doubling arises from A-bar movement of a PP, rather than simply from Wh-Movement of a PP.
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138 Prepositional Relatives However, there are a number of aspects of the movement-without-deletion analysis of preposition doubling which prove potentially problematic. One concerns the spellout of the lower copy of the fronted wh-phrase. Pullum (2007) comments on this in relation to the following sentence which he googled: (11)
A bit part role is something [to which Traore grew accustomed to] during his time at Liverpool . . .
He argues that under the copy theory of movement with visible copies, the expected outcome for the bracketed relative clause would be *to which Traore grew accustomed to which. More generally, he claims that the copy theory of movement would wrongly predict that both an in situ copy of the preposition and an in situ copy of the wh-relativiser would be expected to be left behind under movement – and yet, there is no wh-copy left behind, whether in (6), (8) or (11). However, Radford, Felser and Boxell (2012: 406, fn. 5) dismiss this objection in the following terms (where example numbering is adapted to that used here): If we suppose that a copy of a wh-operator can only be spelled out in an operator position (viz. spec-CP), his objection is without force, since spelling out a copy of which after to in (11) would yield an illicit wh-chain with two operators and no variable
Thus, Radford, Felser and Boxell maintain that the absence of wh-copying in such structures follows from independent considerations. However, a second spellout problem posed by the copying analysis is that spelling out an in situ copy of the preposition appears to be inconsistent with the general assumption made about spellout (derived from work by Nunes 1995, 1999, 2001, 2004) that only the highest copy of a moved constituent is overtly spelled out, and that lower copies obligatorily receive a null spellout unless they require an overt spellout for independent reasons.5 And yet, as observed by 5
For example, Radford (2016: 252) argues that there are independent reasons why the lower copy of the inverted auxiliary could/did is spelled out overtly in child English sentences such as the following (from Guasti et al. 1995, with the names of the children producing the utterances in question being given in parentheses, along with their ages in years;months): (i) Why could Snoopy couldn’t fit in the boat? (Kathy 4;0) (ii) What did he didn’t wanna bring to school? (Darrell 4;1) Radford suggests that children who produce auxiliary doubling structures like these treat n’t as a phonological clitic which must attach to an immediately preceding overt auxiliary at PF. Consequently, the lower copy of the inverted auxiliary requires an overt spellout in order to provide an appropriate overt host for the clitic n’t.
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Jónsson (2008: 408), there seems to be ‘no principled reason why the lower copy of the preposition can be phonetically realized in this structural configuration’. This means that the copying analysis is problematic unless we can find some reason the lower copy of the preposition can be spelled out overtly. But what plausible reason could there be? One possibility which has been widely countenanced is that the lower preposition is spelled out overtly because it is closely connected to its selector: see Ross (1986), Johansson & Geisler (1998), Trotta (2000), Gries, Hampe & Schönefeld (2005), Hoffmann (2005, 2011), and Nykiel (2010) for variants of this account. By way of illustration, consider the doubling of the italicised prepositions in relative clauses like those bracketed below: (12)
a. It is critical to have a group of fellow physicians [on which you can depend on for insight, guidance and advice] (nutritioncare.org) b. They’ll be given a strict mission [with which to comply with] (Helicopter pilot, BBC Radio 5) c. He also became adept at basketball, dancing, canoeing and boxing, a sport [at which he excelled at] (legacy.com) d. . . . a submissive and formulaically ‘bipartisan’ stunt group without so much as a doctrine [by which they abide by] (roqchams.com) e. These are the four qualities [without which we can’t do without] (mmochampion.com) f. It was much too big on her, [ for which she was grateful for as it covered her] (fanfiction.net)
Under the connectivity account, the lower copy of the preposition is spelled out overtly because the preposition is closely connected (lexically and semantically) to the underlined verb/adjective, and so resists being separated from it. The connection here involves a close head-complement selection relation, in that (e.g. in 12a) the verb depend is a head which selects a prepositional phrase headed by on as its complement. The use of on with depend would seem to be language-specific selectional idiosyncrasy, since French has dépendre de ‘depend of’, and Italian says dipendere da ‘depend by’.6 6
Hornstein & Weinberg (1981: 58) argue that only complement PPs allow P-stranding, not adjunct PPs. However, this is something of an oversimplification, since it has been observed by Starke (2001: 40, fn. 10), Truswell (2007, 2009, 2011), Chaves (2012), and Fábregas & Jiménez-Fernández (2012) that extraction out of certain types of adjunct is acceptable in German, Spanish, Swedish and (as below) English: (i) This is something which you should think twice [before doing —]
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140 Prepositional Relatives However, the connectivity account leaves a number of questions unanswered in its wake. One is why the preposition should be pied-piped at all, if there is such a close connection between verb/adjective and preposition in (12) and if this close connection means that the two are resistant to being separated. Perhaps the answer is that English has a connectivity constraint which requires us to maximise connectivity, e.g. by not separating a head from its complement. Moving which on its own in (12a) and stranding on (as in which you can depend on) incurs a connectivity violation by virtue of separating the preposition on from its complement which. Conversely, piedpiping on along with which (as on on which you can depend) incurs a different connectivity violation, by separating the verb depend from its on-phrase complement. Thus, both pied-piping and stranding induce a single connectivity violation. By contrast, a doubling structure like that bracketed in (12a) does not incur any connectivity violation, since the (higher copy of the) preposition on remains connected to its complement which, and the verb depend remains connected to a prepositional phrase headed by (the lower copy of) on. On this view, preposition doubling is a syntactic device used to obviate connectivity violations. However, the connectivity account outlined in the previous paragraph faces the problem of explaining why (if it offers an optimal solution to the connectivity problem) preposition doubling occurs so infrequently in English. For example, in a corpus survey of Kenyan English, Hoffman (2011) reports that out of 1,308 cases of prepositional relatives, just 14 involve doubling, so that doubling is found in only 1.1% of the relevant structures. In a more limited survey based on the occurrence of the two prepositions about and with in the British National Corpus, van Gysel (2015: 29–30) reports that out of 344 prepositional relatives in the corpus, only five (1.5%) involve preposition doubling. So, if preposition doubling provides an optimal solution to the connectivity problem, why is it comparatively infrequent? Perhaps the answer is that spelling out two copies of a single preposition violates an economy constraint on spellout which amounts to ‘Minimise the amount of material to be overtly pronounced in the phonology’ – a condition closely related to the conversational maxim ‘Be concise!’ of Grice (1975). But then the converse question arises: if economy considerations rule out double spellout, how could prepositional doubling arise for the minority of people who use it? A possible answer might be offered in terms of the notion of constraint ranking developed in work on Optimality Theory by Grimshaw (1997), Pesetsky (1998), Dekkers, Leeuw & van der Weijer (2000), Sells (2001), Müller
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(2000, 2001), Legendre, Grimshaw & Vikner (2001), Vogel (2001, 2006), Broekhuis (2008) and others. We might suppose that for most speakers, economy is a higher-ranked/stronger constraint than connectedness (thereby ruling out preposition doubling), but that a handful of speakers treat economy and connectedness as more or less equally ranked, and so alternate between doubling, stranding, and pied-piping structures. A different approach to the spellout problem is sketched in Radford (2009a), and adopted in Armstrong & Mackenzie (2013). Given that (as Abels 2003 has shown) preposition pied-piping is found in the overwhelming majority of the world’s languages, and preposition stranding only in a very small minority7, Radford (2009a: 236) conjectures that ‘Preposition pied-piping is obligatory in English (and universally), but that languages may differ with regard to which link/s of the wh-chain the preposition is spelled out on.’ Radford & Felser (2011: 5) elaborate on this by positing that there are the following two alternative ways of spelling out pied-piped prepositions in English: (13)
i. ii.
The preposition is given an overt spellout on the highest link of a chain (high spellout) The preposition is given an overt spellout on the lowest link of a chain (low spellout)
The way in which this account works can be illustrated in relation to the appositive relative clause bracketed below (slightly adapted from a real example): (14)
The plea agreement, [into which he entered into reluctantly], saw his sentence reduced from 10 years to 5
On the assumption that pied-piping is universal, Wh-Movement in (14) will pied-pipe the preposition into along with which, so generating the syntactic structure bracketed below: (15)
The plea agreement, [RELP into which [REL ø] he entered into which reluctantly] . . .
Since (for reasons that we looked at earlier) a wh-relativiser is usually only spelled out on the highest copy of a movement chain, it follows that only the higher copy of the relative pronoun which will be overtly spelled out at PF. 7
According to Emonds & Faarlund (2014: 84–96), preposition stranding is limited to Scandinavian and North Germanic languages (including Danish, Dutch, English, Frisian, Norwegian and Swedish), Berber, Hungarian, and the Mesoamerican language Zoque.
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142 Prepositional Relatives As for the spellout of the preposition, applying the high spellout rule in (13i) will result in only the higher copy of the preposition being spelled out overtly as in (16a) below, whereas conversely applying the low spellout rule in (13ii) will result in only the lower copy of the preposition being overtly pronounced as in (16b): (16)
a. [RELP into which [REL ø] he entered into which reluctantly] (high spellout) b. [RELP into which [REL ø] he entered into which reluctantly] (low spellout)
For the majority of speakers, the high and low spellout rules in (13) are disjunctive options (in the sense that only one of the two can apply). However, a small number of speakers allow the two spellout rules to apply in either a disjunctive or conjunctive fashion, in the sense that they allow either one or both of the rules to apply to a given structure. Applying only one of the two rules will yield the outputs in (16a) or (16b) above, but applying both conjunctively will yield the output in (17) below (assuming that the lower copy of which is silent): (17)
[RELP into which [REL ø] he entered into which reluctantly] (high+low spellout)
Given that (as we saw earlier) economy considerations disfavour double spellout, it is scarcely surprising that doubling structures like (17) are infrequent. Radford & Felser argue that their dual spellout analysis accounts for a number of the characteristics of prepositional doubling. One relates to what happens in cases of long-distance Wh-Movement like that which occurs in sentences like that below: (18)
To which of these groups do you consider that you belong to? (Official form issued by my local Council)
They argue that if (as generally assumed) long-distance Wh-Movement applies in a successive-cyclic (one-clause-at-a-time) fashion, the wh-PP to which of these groups will move to the front of the that-clause before moving to the front of the do-clause, so giving rise the wh-chain italicised in (19) below:8 (19)
8
[CP To which of these groups [C do] you consider [CP to which of these groups [C that] you belong to which of these groups]] (Radford & Felser 2011: 6)
I use the CP framework adopted by Radford & Felser 2011 here, and simplify the discussion by ignoring the possibility that the fronted wh-phrase transits through the edge of other constituents.
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If the high spellout rule (13i) applies on its own, only the highest copy of the preposition will be spelled out as in (20a) below. If the low spellout rule (13ii) applies on its own, only the lowest copy of the preposition will be spelled out as in (20b). If both the high and low spellout rules apply, both the highest and lowest copies of the preposition will be spelled out as in (20c): (20)
a. To which of these groups do you consider that you belong? b. Which of these groups do you consider that you belong to? c. To which of these groups do you consider that you below to? (= 18)
But since the spellout rules in (13) make no provision for intermediate copies of prepositions to be spelled out, the account correctly predicts that none of the outcomes in (21) below will be grammatical: (21)
a. *To which of these groups do you consider to that you belong? b. *Which of these groups do you consider to that you belong to? c. *To which of these groups do you consider to that you belong to?
This is because the spellout rules in (13) make no provision for intermediate copies to be spelled out, thereby ruling out the possibility of the bold-printed intermediate copies being overtly spelled out in (21). Radford & Felser also claim that the dual spellout analysis accounts for why wh-less relatives like those below (which they take to involve fronting a null relative wh-operator/WH) have no preposition copying counterpart like (22b): (22)
a. The world [WH we are living in] is changing b. *The world [in WH we are living in] is changing
If preposition copying involves spelling out a fronted preposition in both its initial and final positions, the ungrammaticality of (22b) can be attributed to the constraint noted by Chomsky (1982) that a null constituent cannot pied-pipe overt material along with it under movement – a constraint which also rules out null operator relatives like: (23)
*The world [in WH we are living] is changing
(23) – like (22b) – is ruled out by the pied-piping constraint because it involves a fronted null wh-constituent illicitly pied-piping an overt preposition along with it. Although the dual spellout rule account of preposition doubling provides a novel way of handling preposition doubling, Radford & Felser point out a number of drawbacks to it. One is that the assumption that prepositions undergo ‘invisible’ pied-piping even when they seemingly remain in situ and are stranded proves problematic in respect of contrasts such as the following:
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144 Prepositional Relatives (24)
a. Without any food or water, people cannot survive for more than a few days b. *Any food or water, people cannot survive without for more than a few days c. Food and water, people cannot survive without for more than a few days
As we see in (24a), an (inherently negative) fronted preposition like without can license a polarity item (such as partitive any) which it locally c-commands. However, if preposition stranding structures like (24b) involved preposition piedpiping (with the fronted P being given a null spellout), (24b) would wrongly be predicted to be as well-formed as (24a) or (24c). Thus, the ungrammaticality of sentences such as (24b) calls into question the suggestion that prepositionstranding structures involve invisible preposition pied-piping. 9 A second problem posed by the assumption that prepositions undergo obligatory pied-piping when their complement is moved arises in relation to sentences such as the following: (25)
a. What did you do that for?/*For what did you do that? b. Where are you going to?/*To where are you going? c. Where are we at, right now?/*At where are we right now?
It is not obvious how to account for structures like (25) in which the (italicised) preposition for/to/at obligatorily remains in situ when its bold-printed complement is fronted if prepositions are obligatorily pied-piped when their complements are moved. Such considerations suggest that the analysis in Radford (2009a) needs to be refined. Radford & Felser propose a revision under which pied-piping of a preposition under A-bar movement is (generally) optional,10 but the high 9
A similar pattern holds in relative clauses, as we see from: (i)
They gave him food, water, clothes and blankets, without any of which he would have died (ii) *They gave him food, water, clothes and blankets, any of which he would have died without
10
A complicating factor here is that (ii) is made somewhat degraded by the fact that it involves extraction out of an adjunct. A further complication is that (ii) is much better if any is a free choice quantifier (carrying emphatic stress) rather than a partitive quantifier, because free choice any is not a polarity item. This should not be taken to mean that the choice is free. Preposition pied-piping has variously been handled in terms of percolation of a wh-feature to PP (Chomsky 1973, Cowper 1987, Webelhuth 1992, Grosu 1994, Moritz & Valois 1994, Aissen 1996, Sag 1997, Grimshaw 2000), wh-agreement between P and its wh-complement (Radford 1997; Heck 2009), convergence (Chomsky 1995: 264), whether or not PP is a phase (Abels 2003), whether or not P carries an edge feature allowing a wh-phrase to escape out of PP (Drummond, Hornstein & Lasnik 2010), or in terms of the position of an abstract projection containing the constituent undergoing Wh-Movement (Cable 2010).
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spellout rule (13i) is obligatory, and the low spellout rule (13ii) is optional. On this view, Wh-Movement would give rise either to preposition-pied-piping syntactic structures such as (26a) below, or to preposition-in-situ structures such as (26b): (26)
a. the plea agreement, [RELP into which [REL ø] he entered into which reluctantly] . . . b. the plea agreement, [RELP which [REL ø] he entered into which reluctantly] . . .
In (26a), if the (obligatory) high spellout rule (13i) applies on its own, the result will be to derive the preposition pied-piping structure (27a) below; if the (optional) low spellout rule (13ii) also applies, the result will be to derive the preposition doubling structure (27b): (27)
a. [RELP into which [REL ø] he entered into which reluctantly] (high spellout) b. [RELP into which [REL ø] he entered into which reluctantly] (high+low spellout)
In the case of (26b), there is no movement of the preposition, with the result that application of either spellout rule in (13) will result in the sole (in situ) copy of the preposition being overtly spelled out. However, both the original and the revised versions of the dual spellout analysis face further problems. For one thing (as pointed out by Radford & Felser 2011: 9), application of both spellout rules in (13) might be expected to give rise to stylistic incongruity (high spellout being characteristic of formal styles, and low spellout of non-formal styles), and it is questionable whether speakers would mix styles and use both spellout rules. In addition, Radford & Felser argue, the very low frequency of preposition doubling suggests that it is more likely to be a sporadic processing error than a productive spellout phenomenon. In addition, the assumption that initial (as well as final) copies of moved constituents can optionally be spelled out overtly is problematic from a theoretical perspective. As already noted, the assumption that English has a low spellout rule like (13ii) runs into the problem that such a rule is at variance with the general assumption that lower copies are only spelled out overtly when there is some reason to do so: and yet it is not clear why the lowest copy of the preposition should be spelled out in addition to the highest copy. To summarise: in this section, I have explored the idea that preposition doubling in relative clauses involves a copying operation under which
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146 Prepositional Relatives a PP comprising a preposition and a relative pronoun complement undergoes Wh-Movement, and both the highest and lowest copies of the preposition are spelled out. However, such an account leaves us with no principled answer to the question of why the lowest copy of the preposition should be spelled out overtly, when only the highest copies of moved constituents are generally spelled out. Thus, the account could be argued to be ad hoc. Accordingly, in the next section I turn to explore an alternative split-projection account of preposition doubling. 3.3
Preposition Doubling as Splitting
Pioneering research by Larson (1988, 1990), Hale and Keyser (1991, 1993, 1994), Chomsky (1995) and Kratzer (1993, 1996) and many others argued for splitting the verb phrase into two distinct projections – an inner core comprising a lexical projection (VP) headed by a lexical verb contained within an outer shell comprising a functional projection (vP) headed by an abstract light verb (ø), with the lexical verb raising to adjoin to the abstract light verb. Under the textbook account of this in Radford (1997: 376), the bracketed verb phrase in a sentence like (28a) below will have the derivation in (28b) (with the farmer subsequently raising up to become the subject of will): (28)
a. The farmer will [load the truck with hay] b. [vP the farmer [v load+ ] [VP the truck [V load] with hay]]
The verb load originates as the head of the inner VP projection, and subsequently raises up to adjoin to the null light verb (ø) heading the outer vP projection. Subsequent research extended this shell approach to other phrases, arguing that they too contain an inner lexical projection contained within an outer functional shell. For example, Radford (2004a: 367–72) showed how this approach could be extended to noun phrases, if a noun phrase like that bracketed in (29a) below has the derivation in (29b): (29)
a. Israel’s unexpected [withdrawal of troops from the occupied territories] b. [nP Israel [n withdraw+ ] [NP troops [N withdraw] from the occupied territories]]
On this view, withdraw originates in the head N position of NP and from there moves to adjoin to a light noun heading nP, and is consequently spelled out as the nominal withdrawal. Subsequently, Israel raises across the modifier
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unexpected to become the specifier of a superordinate D which assigns it genitive case (although this additional structure is not shown in 29b). In much the same way, it has been argued by a number of linguists that prepositional phrases have a parallel shell structure comprising an inner lexical projection (PP) headed by a lexical preposition contained within an outer functional projection (pP) headed by a light preposition, with the lexical preposition raising from p to P.11 Such an approach provides the potential to develop an analysis of compound prepositions such as out of in sentences like: (30)
Get out of the house!
Here, the preposition out has lexical content, whereas the preposition of seems to be essentially a functor whose role is to assign case to the DP the house. One way of accounting for this is to suppose that the phrase out of the house has a split projection structure in which out originates as the head of a lexical PP, and subsequently raises to adjoin to the preposition of which heads the functional pP shell, as shown below: (31)
[pP [p out+of] [PP [P out] the house]]
Adjunction of out to of forms the complex preposition out of, which is sometimes written in colloquial English as the single word outta (as in the title of the film Get Outta Here!). An analysis along the lines of (31) predicts that the string out of the house can be preposed as a single unit in a sentence like (32a) below (because it is a pP), but the string of the house cannot be preposed in (32b), because it is a non-constituent string: (32)
a. Out of the house ran the terrified woman b. *Of the house ran the terrified woman out
Thus, a split projection analysis can provide a principled account of the behaviour of the relevant kind of complex prepositional phrase.12 11
12
For variants of the split projection analysis of prepositional phrases, see a.o. van Riemsdijk (1990), Rouveret (1991), Zwart (1993), Rooryck (1996) and Hellmantel (2002). This kind of approach sits within a wider framework in which phrases have a dual structure which involves a projection of a lexical root contained within a functional projection whose head determines the categorial status of the overall phrase. See Rooryck (1996) for a related split projection analysis of out of phrases. It should be noted that the discussion throughout this section abstracts away from cartographic work (such as the collection of papers in Cinque & Rizzi 2010b) which sees prepositional phrases as having a far richer structure than that discussed here (e.g. with separate projections for LOCATION, DIRECTION, GOAL, PATH, SOURCE etc.).
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148 Prepositional Relatives A classic argument in favour of splitting verb phrases into two separate (lexical and functional) projections is that each projection can have an adverbial modifier of its own: see Radford (1997: §9.3) for arguments of this ilk. In this connection, consider the position of the adverb slowly in the following sentences: (33)
a. The car slowly rolled down the hill b. The car rolled slowly down the hill
If the verb roll originates as the head of the lexical VP and subsequently raises to adjoin to the light verb heading the functional vP projection, slowly will modify vP in (33a), but VP in (33b). In this connection, it is interesting to reflect on doubled prepositional phrases such as the following (34a–34d from Liberman 2007d, and 34f–34j sourced from the internet by me): (34)
a. Credit cards came along [in mostly in the 1970s] b. That the film makes such impact is due [to partly to the men in supporting roles] . . . c. Homeopathy or even some conventional treatments may work [through partly through the placebo effect] d. The terrain consists [of largely of rolling Piedmont hills] e. Edwin Landseer, a famous painter known [ for above all for his dogs and horses], was asked to design the lions in 1858 (natm.wikia.com) f. It places a good emphasis [on of course on topology], which isn’t really emphasised so much in physics texts (math.stackex change.com) g. A 2009 memo by Thomson made the new priorities explicit, a Murdochian emphasis driven home again [with, if anything, with even greater force], in case the staff didn’t get the message the first time (Columbia Journalism Review, archives.cjr.org) h. The feature works [without even without a wi-fi connection] (quora.com) i. . . . resources are limited, so in part, the ‘feds’ act [against mostly against the worst offenders] (ultimatefatburner.com) j. Bush’s Presidency, like that of Ronald Reagan, has been driven [by largely by his conservative ideological predispositions] . . . (B. Farmer, 2008, American Conservatism: History, Theory and Practice, Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 387)
If we take the underlined adverbial modifier in the bracketed prepositional phrase in (34a) to be the specifier of a MODP projection, the bracketed prepositional phrase will have the derivation shown below, if the preposition originates as the head of PP, and from there undergoes
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Head Movement and adjoins to the head of pP (as shown by the arrow below):13 (35)
[pP [P in+ ] [MODP mostly [MOD ] [PP [P in] the 1970s]
Under this analysis, the modifier mostly is positioned between the edge of the higher pP projection and that of the lower PP projection. The fact that a modifier can be positioned in the middle of a prepositional phrase in structures like those bracketed in (34) provides evidence for a split projection analysis of prepositional phrases. An interesting aspect of the split prepositional phrase structures in (35) above is that they contain two copies of the relevant preposition – one in the position within PP in which the preposition originates, and another in the position within pP in which it ends up. In other words, the highest and lowest copies of the preposition are spelled out overtly, (but not the intermediate copy in MOD if – as suggested in fn.13 – the preposition transits through MOD). Why should this be? Spelling out the highest copy of the preposition in pP is unproblematic, since the canonical spellout pattern in all types of movement is for the highest copy of the moved constituent to be spelled out overtly. But why should the lowest copy of the preposition also be spelled out in (34, 35)? After all, this is not the usual outcome, as we see if we consider what would happen if mostly were not present in (35) and we had the structure in (36) below instead: (36)
13
[pP [P in+ ] [PP [P in] the 1970s]
The intervening adverbial will be the specifier of MODP (not its head), since we see from (34e– 34g) that it can be a phrase like above all, of course or if anything. A detail which I set aside here is whether the preposition moves directly from P to p, or whether it transits through MOD. Independent motivation for the idea that an intervening MODP is not a barrier to Head Movement comes from the observation that an inverted auxiliary can move from the gap position below across an intervening (underlined) adverbial modifier in structures such as the following: Had at any point the town council ― been advised that blue badge holders would not be able to park as before, we would have asked and advocated for designated bays (wiltsglosstandard.co.uk) (ii) I sincerely apologise for the redundancy, should, by any chance, you ― have received this e-mail multiple times (pvamu.edu) (iii) But should, perhaps, the more academic, journalistic side of the anti-war movement in America ― be covered? (coursehero.com) (iv) Will ever anyone ― deliver me? (Line from the song Endless by the La’s) (i)
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150 Prepositional Relatives In an unmodified PP like (36), only a single copy of the preposition (the higher one) is spelled out overtly. So why are two copies of the preposition spelled out in a modified PP like that in (35)? The answer would appear to be that (for speakers who allow this kind of structure), preposition doubling comes about when the lower PP is split (i.e. separated) from its pP shell in some way. In cases like (34, 35), the lexical PP is split from its functional pP shell by an intervening MODP projection containing an (underlined) modifier like mostly, so that PP is no longer immediately contained within pP, and the preposition is spelled out overtly in both projections (perhaps as an aid to parsing, because breaking up the prepositional phrase into two separate ‘chunks’ makes it more difficult to parse the whole structure as a single prepositional phrase). If so, doubling arises as a result of splitting.14 The assumption that preposition doubling in cases like (34) is the result of splitting (more precisely, separating a lexical PP from its functional pP shell) has important implications for the analysis of preposition doubling in relative clauses. It raises the possibility that doubled prepositions in relative clauses may arise when the lower part of the prepositional phrase (the lexical PP) is fronted, and thus split off from the upper part (the functional pP). If so, the bracketed relative clause in a sentence like (37a) below will have the derivation
14
There may be broader parallels here with other forms of doubling, like auxiliary doubling in cases such as the following: (i) Could you could have a gluten allergy and not know it? (tv.greenmedinfo.com) (ii) Can its wheels can spin? (produced by a boy called Sam aged 2 years 9 months; Ian Crookston pers. comm., cited in Radford 2004a: 156) (iii) Had I had been advised to stay laying down longer, and not to drive myself home, I might not have had to endure the week of pain that I did (healdove.com) (iv) He’s improved enormously, as has Gibbs has at left back (Gary Neville, Sky Sports TV) (v) Aside from that, nobody should ever should feel under pressure to take more placements than they’re comfortable with . . . (communitycare.co.uk) (vi) The BBC’s compliance with these will in future will be covered in a separate annual report on the BBC . . . (ofcom.org.uk) In (i–iv), an italicised inverted auxiliary moves across an underlined subject, whereas in (v, vi) a modal auxiliary moves (from the head of a modal projection/MP to the head of a tense projection/TP) across an underlined intervening adverbial (Radford 2016: 277–9). The broader generalisation would seem to be that preposition and auxiliary doubling arise when the highest and lowest copies of the moved head are non-adjacent (e.g. by virtue of being separated by some intervening constituent). Questions of detail need to be worked out, but I will not pursue these here.
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sketched in simplified form in (37b), where the PP in which is extracted out its pP shell and fronted on its own:15 (37)
a. It’s the world [in which we live in] (Gary Lineker, BT Sports TV) b. [RELP [PP in which] [REL ] we [VP live [pP in [PP —]]]]
This results in a structure in which the prepositional phrase is split into two parts, with the PP projection being fronted, and the pP projection being left behind and stranded in situ at the end of the clause. Splitting off PP from pP (whether by intrusion of some constituent between pP and PP as in 35, or by fronting PP and stranding pP as in 37) results in both copies of the preposition (the one in the fronted pP as well as the one in the stranded pP) being spelled out overtly. Still, this raises the question of why two different copies of the preposition should be spelled out overtly. One possibility is that both the copy of the preposition heading pP and that heading PP are the highest copies of the preposition in their immediate domain, in the sense that each copy heads a (pP/PP) projection which is not immediately contained within a prepositional projection headed by another copy of the preposition: for example, the projection immediately containing PP in (37b) is RELP, and the projection immediately containing pP is VP, and neither RELP nor VP is a prepositional projection. Accordingly, since both the copy of the preposition heading pP and that heading PP are the highest copies of the preposition in its immediate domain, both are spelled out overtly in accordance with the assumption that the highest copies in movement chains are spelled out overtly.16 As noted earlier, doubling may be 15
16
I set aside here the complication that, if pP is a phase/barrier to extraction, the extracted PP will have to transit through the edge of pP, attracted there by an edge feature on p. A different account of doubling is given in the split projection analysis of preposition doubling in relative clauses proposed for Icelandic in Jónsson (2008). He maintains that the PP housing the preposition is contained within a larger functional projection FP (which corresponds to the pP constituent used here), and that there is ‘movement of the preposition to a head position within the functional layer of the PP where the preposition is reanalysed as part of a word’. Subsequently, the PP is fronted, and the lower copy of the fronted PP (but not the FP containing it, which remains in situ) is given a null spellout. Jónsson outlines the key stages of his proposed derivation as follows: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv)
[FP F [PP P [DP]]] [FP [F [Pi+F]] [PP Pi [DP]]] [PPj Pi [DP]] . . . [FP [F [Pi+F]] [PPj Pi [DP]]] [PPj Pi [DP]] . . . [FP [F [Pi+F]] [PPj Pi [DP]]]
(P is reanalysed with F) (the PP is fronted) (the lower PP is deleted)
He maintains that the copy of the P which has adjoined to F is not deleted because it is not visible to the Chain Reduction operation that deletes lower copies in a movement chain. This is because a lower copy is invisible to Chain Reduction if it has been incorporated into a separate word,
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152 Prepositional Relatives designed to facilitate parsing, providing a means by which the split PP and pP constituents can more easily be parsed as a unitary prepositional phrase. The splitting analysis outlined above can in principle be extended to handle a further type of prepositional doubling (illustrated below) which was found in earlier varieties of English: (38)
But if ye will sel it, send word to your son what ye will doe, for I know nothing els [wherewith to help you with] (Helsinki corpus, private letters of Isabel Plumpton, 1500–70, s2, L.162, p.199; example cited in Yáñez-Bouza 2007, and Liberman 2007b)
If we follow van Riemsdijk (1978) and Hellmantel (2002) in taking pronouns like wherewith to involve where moving from comp-PP to spec-PP (i.e. from complement to specifier position within PP), we can suppose that the resulting PP [PP where with] subsequently moves out of its containing pP shell on its own, so creating a split pP structure like that shown in simplified form below: (39)
[RELP [PP where with] [REL ] to help you [pP [p with] —]
Since PP has been split from its containing pP, both the italicised copy of the preposition in PP and the bold-printed copy in pP are spelled out overtly, thereby resulting in preposition doubling.17 The splitting analysis of preposition doubling outlined above is consistent with splitting accounts of other types of doubling developed by researchers including
17
because word-internal structure is invisible to linearisation operations (Chomsky 1995; Nunes 2001, 2004). He treats movement and reanalysis as two independent operations, one involving ‘movement of a preposition to F’, and the second involving ‘reanalysis of the preposition’ as a word (Jónsson 2008: 413). He posits that ‘reanalysis of the moved preposition is only possible for some speakers’ (2008: 410). A more elaborate split projection analysis of P-doubling is proposed for Flemish in Aelbrecht & den Dikken (2011, 2013), but I will not pursue this here. It may be that where fuses with with to form a single word at PF, although in Dutch r-pronouns can remain separate from (and hence undergo movement without) the preposition, as in: dat boek op gelegd? (i) Waar heb jij where have you that book on put ‘What did you put that book on?’ (Koopman 2010) It should be noted that a derivation like that in (39) runs into the potential problem that moving where from complement to specifier position internally within PP violates a constraint which Boeckx (2007: 110) formulates as follows: (i) Antilocality Constraint ‘Movement internal to a projection counts as too local, and is banned’ One way round this would be to suppose that where remains in situ in comp-PP in the syntax, but subsequently adjoins to the left of with at PF, so forming the complex word wherewith.
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Kayne (1994), Uriagereka (1995), Belletti (2006) and Poletto (2006, 2008) – and indeed with the determiner stranding analysis of resumptive personal pronouns (discussed in §2.6) developed by Boeckx (2003, 2007, 2012). However, the analysis leaves a number of important empirical questions in its wake. One is the issue of what differentiates preposition doubling from preposition pied-piping and preposition stranding. A possible story is the following. Let us suppose that pP is a phase and hence a barrier to direct extraction of any constituent positioned below the edge of pP. We can then say that pied-piping arises when p has no edge feature to attract a lower constituent to move to the edge of pP, with the result that neither the relative pronoun nor the PP containing it can be extracted out of pP, and the only way Wh-Movement can apply is to front the whole pP. By contrast, preposition stranding arises when p carries an edge feature which allows the relative pronoun to be extracted on its own by moving through the edge of pP. Doubling arises when p again has an edge feature, and the relative pronoun pied-pipes the head P of PP along with it when it moves through the edge of pP.18 Still, this account raises the question of why, if preposition doubling arises through a syntactic mechanism, it is so rare in English (in spite of being relatively frequent in Icelandic and Flemish, for example). Moreover, the account outlined above requires us to suppose that for a speaker who makes optional use of a doubled preposition in a phrase like the world in which we live (in), the head p constituent of pP optionally carries an edge feature. This is potentially problematic, in part because much work in syntactic theory has sought to eliminate optionality from syntax, in part because the edge feature on other types of head (e.g. that on a REL head, or a TOP head, or a FOC head) is obligatory, and in part because the nature of edge features is poorly understood. In addition, the analysis requires the postulation of some mechanism which (in doubling cases) ensures that the relative pronoun pied-pipes the copy of the preposition heading PP along with it when it moves through the edge of pP, and it is far from clear what the relevant pied-piping mechanism is.19 In short, the splitting account of doubling leaves some of the key details of how doubling comes about unresolved, and furthermore it fails to explain why doubling comes about. 18 19
See Chapter 3, fn. 10 on various mechanisms which have been invoked to trigger pied-piping. Things are no clearer or more principled under the account in Jónsson (2008) outlined in fn. 16, since he posits that preposition doubling results when P movement to F and reanalysis take place, but that stranding involves ‘movement of P to F without reanalysis’ (2008: 411); it is far from clear what reanalysis is, and what triggers it. Hicks (2010: 49) criticises Jónsson’s analysis on the grounds that there is a conspicuous lack of motivation for movement of prepositions from P to F, that it can’t handle doubling in cases of code-mixing (where a preposition in one language is doubled by one from another), and that it can’t be extended to other cases of doubling (e.g. complementiser doubling).
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154 Prepositional Relatives To summarise: in this section, we have examined an alternative account of preposition doubling under which prepositional phrases are taken to comprise a PP projection headed by a lexical preposition contained within a functional pP projection headed by an abstract light preposition which attracts the lexical preposition to adjoin to it, and prepositional doubling arises when PP is split from pP either by a movement operation separating PP from pP, or by intrusion of another projection (e.g. MODP) between PP and pP. Where PP is split from pP, both the copy of the preposition heading pP and that heading PP are spelled out overtly, by virtue of being the highest copies of the preposition in its immediate domain. However, I noted that the splitting account of preposition doubling leaves a number of questions of implementation in its wake, e.g. about the mechanism triggering pied-piping, and why doubling is optional for speakers who use it, and why it is sporadic. Moreover, a number of linguists have argued that both the copying analysis of preposition doubling outlined in the previous section and the splitting analysis outlined in this section are fatally flawed in that that they fail to capture putative similarities between doubled prepositions on the one hand and intrusive prepositions on the other. Accordingly, in the next section I turn to take a closer look at the phenomenon of preposition intrusion. 3.4
Preposition Intrusion
An empirical objection which has been raised to the copying analysis of preposition doubling by a number of linguists20 (and which could equally be levelled at the splitting analysis) is that preposition doubling does not always result in structures containing identical copies of a single preposition. Rather, it sometimes gives rise to structures that contain both a pied-piped and a stranded preposition, but with a mismatch between the two (in the sense that two different prepositions are used). Riley & Parker (1986) provide the following examples of structures which involve preposition mismatching, taken mainly from the written work of college students (with in which being written as a single word in 40b): (40)
20
a. . . . the organization [in which a person is affiliated with] (Smith 1981: 311) b. . . . my leisure time [inwhich I had plenty of ] (Smith 1981: 311)
See a.o. Bergh (1998), Bergh & Seppänen (2000), Yáñez-Bouza (2007, 2014), and Nykiel (2010).
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c. One should be facing the direction [in which he came from] (Smith 1981: 311–12) d. One of my fondest memories, [in which I came back to over and over] . . . (Free 1982: 309)
Similar cases are reported in Liberman (2014), who records examples like the following collected by Glenn Bingham from student assignments: (41)
a. For this assignment, I chose unicorns to be my mythological character [in which I am familiar with] b. . . . this is the evidence [in which we must apply our logic to] c. It is an entity [in which all things come from and will come from] d. Both are two different argument types, but just about mean the same thing about where God can be found, a thought [in which many may ponder upon] e. Heraclitus believed that fire was the primary element [in which the earth was composed of ] f. . . . you are supposed to be brought back to life in his kingdom [in which he will be the king of ]
Riley and Parker (1986: 293) observe that ‘In all of the mismatched preposition data, only the clause-final (or stranded) preposition is an appropriate one for the verb phrase; the clause-initial (or fronted) preposition is inappropriate.’ They note that the preposition used immediately in front of the relative pronoun in their data is typically in. Riley and Parker also report a second class of non-canonical prepositional relatives which they term extra preposition structures. These are structures like those bracketed below (again taken from the written work of college students) in which the object of a verb is relativised via the use of the preposition in (and inwhich is sometimes written as a single word): (42)
a. You can just about demand the price [in which you think you should receive] (Shaugnessy 1977: 64) b. There was a movie [inwhich I saw] (Smith 1981: 310) c. It was a night [inwhich none of us will ever forget] (ibid.) d. The children [inwhich Aunt Betty kept] had to be taken care of (ibid.) e. I would absolutely refuse to ever do the same job [in which I had last summer] (Free 1982: 309) f. A family in Atlanta has seven children [inwhich the parents claim as dependents] (ibid.)
More recent cases are reported by Liberman (2014), who cites examples including those below (collected by Glenn Bingham from student assignments):
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156 Prepositional Relatives (43)
a. . . . they needed to respect the laws [in which government made . . .] b. The one [in which I felt I understood the most] was The Universe is like a Vegetable21 c. The ultimate goal in society was to reach this state of goodness [in which he describes as happiness]
Although Riley and Parker treat ‘extra preposition’ structures as different in kind from ‘preposition mismatch’ structures, the two can be argued to be different sides of the same coin, in that both involve the use of an intrusive preposition in a context where it would be inadmissible in standard varieties of English. For example, in a relative clause like ‘in which a person is affiliated with’ in (40a), the preposition in serves no apparent function (because which is the complement of the stranded preposition with) and would be omitted in standard varieties, and in this sense is intrusive. Similarly, in the relative clause ‘in which you think you should receive’ in (42a), the preposition in again serves no apparent function (since which is the complement of the verb receive) and thus is another example of the intrusive use of in. Riley and Parker offer a syntactic account of intrusive in based on casemarking. To see how their account works, let’s take a look at how they would deal with the structure (40a) above. Under their analysis, the relative pronoun which would originate as the complement of the preposition with, and would subsequently move on its own to the front of the relative clause, resulting in the syntactic structure below (if we transpose this into the framework used here): (44)
the organisation [RELP which [REL ø] a person is affiliated with ―]
They posit that the preposition with fails to assign case to its complement which, and this leaves which without any case, in violation of the Case Filter of Chomsky (1981) which requires every nominal or pronominal constituent to carry case. In order to prevent the derivation from crashing, the preposition in is inserted in front of the relative pronoun, by an operation which Riley and Parker characterise as follows (1986: 302), where [+OBJ] denotes objective/ accusative case: (45)
21
Case Assigner Insertion (CAI) Insert a preposition immediately to the left of a moved wh-item, thereby assigning [+OBJ] case to the wh-item
But note the suggestion in Liberman (2014) that in may indeed be a preposition in this particular example, with the relevant part of the sentence being paraphrasable as ‘the one in relation to which I felt I understood the most’.
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Riley and Parker (1986: 302) take CAI to be an operation ‘that inserts a preposition (rather than copying one)’, noting that ‘in is the preposition of choice’, perhaps because ‘it is somehow the most unmarked preposition in English, perhaps the one which the greatest number of verbs are subcategorized for’. Applying CAI to (44) above will yield the structure below: (46)
the organisation [RELP in which [REL ø] a person is affiliated with ―]
The preposition in (being transitive) will then be able to assign objective case to which, thereby satisfying the Case Filter. Riley and Parker claim that their case analysis can be extended to account for ‘extra preposition’ structures like those in (42, 43) above. Under their analysis, the relative pronoun which in (42a) would originate as the complement of the verb receive, and would subsequently move on its own to the front of the relative clause, giving rise to the structure shown in simplified form below: (47)
the price [RELP which [REL ø] you think you should receive ―]
Because (by hypothesis) the relative pronoun does not receive case from the verb receive, Case Assigner Insertion applies and inserts the preposition in before which, so resulting in the structure (48) below: (48)
the price [RELP in which [REL ø] you think you should receive ―]
The preposition in (being transitive) assigns objective case to which, thereby satisfying the Case Filter. Riley and Parker claim that their case-marking analysis can also provide a principled account of preposition doubling. In their view, the relative clause in a sentence like (49a) below would involve which originating as the complement of (but not being case-marked by) the preposition in, and from there moving to the edge of the relative clause (as in 49b), with a (bold-printed) copy of the preposition in subsequently being inserted in front of which via Case Assigner Insertion (as in 49c): (49)
a. It’s the world [in which we live in] (=37a) b. [RELP which [REL ø] we live in ―] c. [RELP in which [REL ø] we live in ―]
Being transitive, the bold-printed copy of the preposition in assigns accusative case to which, thereby satisfying the Case Filter. Riley and Parker maintain that their analysis provides a unified account of all three types of non-canonical prepositional relative structure – mismatching preposition structures like (46), extra preposition structures like (48) and
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158 Prepositional Relatives preposition doubling structures like (49c). However, this claim seems too strong, since their analysis seemingly cannot account for doubling of prepositions other than in – e.g. doubling of for in the example below: (50)
the majority of residents were taking to the rehabilitation programme, [ for which he said he was thankful for] (sknvibes.com)
Under Riley and Parker’s account, the derivation of the bracketed relative clause would involve which originating as the complement of for and then moving in successive-cyclic fashion to the front of the relative clause, ultimately deriving the structure shown in simplified form below: (51)
[RELP which [REL ø] he said he was thankful for ―]
Since which (by hypothesis) is not case-marked by for, Case Assigner Insertion/ CAI (45) applies at this point. As noted earlier, Riley and Parker (1986: 302) claim that this is an operation ‘that inserts a preposition (rather than copying one)’, and that ‘in is the preposition of choice’. Consequently, CAI would be expected to insert in before which. But instead, we find a copy of the preposition for used. So, in order to make their analysis work for preposition doubling, it seems clear that Riley and Parker have to posit that CAI involves insertion of either in or a copy of the preposition whose complement is being relativised.22 However, the problem this poses is that in order to know what preposition to copy, the grammar has to be able to ‘see’ from the edge of the relative clause to the end of it (where for is positioned). And yet, locality conditions prevent a constituent in one clause from ‘seeing’ beyond the periphery of the next clause below it, and this means that which cannot see the string he was thankful for.23 22
23
It would be implausible to claim that CAI involves insertion of a random preposition that sometimes just happens to be in, and sometimes just happens to be a copy of the preposition whose complement is being relativised. My own broadcast data suggest a clear (non-random) pattern in multiple preposition structures (i.e. structures which contain both a pied-piped and a stranded preposition). In 112 cases we find a copy/double of the relevant preposition being used, and in 33 cases we find preposition mismatch structures which typically either involve two interchangeable prepositions (as in 72 below) or use of the ‘dummy’ preposition of (as in 59 below). The relevant locality conditions include the Subjacency Condition of Chomsky (1973) amended by Rizzi (1982), the Barrierhood Condition of Chomsky (1986), the Relativised Minimality Condition of Rizzi (1990), and the Phase Impenetrability Condition/PIC of Chomsky (1998). The locality argument is more straightforward in cases where the complementiser that is used to introduce the complement clause, as in the constructed example below: (i) This is something [ for which I feel that you should apologise for] This is because, once which reaches the edge of the relative clause, PIC will prevent it from seeing anything below the complementiser that – hence which will be unable to see for. For an authentic example of preposition doubling across an intervening that, see (18).
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In simple terms, this means that the preposition for in (51) would be too far away for which to be able to see it. Thus, an analysis which inserts a copy of the preposition whose complement is being relativised would be unworkable for technical reasons. Consequently, it would seem that preposition doubling must involve preposition pied-piping (as in the copying and splitting analyses sketched in the two previous sections). Furthermore, any preposition insertion operation of the kind which Riley and Parker envisage would be questionable on theoretical grounds. We can illustrate this in relation to the relative nominal in (42a) above ‘the price in which you think you should receive’. Here, CAI will seemingly have to transform the relative clause structure in (52a) below to that in (52b): (52)
a. [RELP [DP which] [REL ø] you think you should receive ―] b. [RELP [PP [P in] [DP which]] [REL ø] you think you should receive ―]
Such an analysis would be problematic in numerous respects. For one thing, it illicitly changes the constituency relations. For instance, the lefthand daughter of RELP is the DP which in (52a) but the PP in which in (52b); and conversely, which is the daughter of RELP in (52a) but of PP in (52b). In consequence of this, which in (52b) no longer c-commands its trace (i.e. the null copy/gap it leaves behind when it moves), because the mother of [DP which] in (52b) is PP, and the only other constituent which PP contains is the preposition in (so that which only c-commands in): this leaves the trace of which without a c-commanding antecedent, and thus illicitly unbound. Furthermore, CAI violates the Inclusiveness Condition of Chomsky (1995, 2001) and the No Tampering Condition of Chomsky (2005, 2007, 2008, 2013, 2015) which bar syntactic operations from adding structure to any part of a tree other than its root. Still, there are technical ways of circumventing these problems. One would be to adopt the proposal by a number of linguists including Lamontagne & Travis (1986, 1987), Abney (1987), Travis & Lamontagne (1992), Loebel (1994), Nevins (2004), and Alexiadou, Haegeman & Staurou-Sëphakë (2007) that DPs are housed within a (base-generated) KP/Kase Phrase shell, with the head K constituent being spelled out as of in genitive contexts, to in dative contexts, by in agentive contexts, and as zero/ø by default in other (e.g. nominative and accusative) contexts. On this view, which would be a DP contained within a KP, so that the edge of the relative clause in (42a) would have the structure below: (53)
[RELP [KP [K ø] [DP which]] [REL ø] you think you should receive ―]
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160 Prepositional Relatives We might then suppose that whereas the default spellout for K in standard varieties of English is ø, in the variety described by Riley and Parker the default spellout for K is in – as in (42a) ‘You can just about demand the price [in which you think you should receive]’. In such a use, intrusive in would be a case particle, and hence would be a separate item from the locative preposition in. An analysis along the lines of (53) would involve no violation of the No Tampering Condition if in is the default PF spellout for the head of a basegenerated KP constituent.24 However, analysing in as a case particle proves problematic. After all, if intrusive in were a productive case particle, we would (wrongly) expect it to be used with all DPs, whereas in actual fact it is restricted to use with relative which (and is not even used with relative who/m). In short, a KP analysis like (53) simply doesn’t account for intrusive in being restricted to use in relatives containing which that do not involving preposition pied-piping. A further aspect of Riley and Parker’s analysis which is problematic is their assumption that when which originates as the complement of a verb like receive in (42a) or of a preposition like with in (41a), it fails to be case-marked by the verb or preposition. This is a problematic assumption, since these items are obligatorily transitive (which, on one view, means they carry an accusative case assignment feature which they have to discharge25), and cannot be used intransitively. Furthermore, even if we set this objection aside and buy into the story about which being caseless at the point when it moves, the assumption that caseless which can only avoid falling foul of the Case Filter by insertion of a dummy prepositional case marker is highly questionable. After all, English (and other languages) have a mechanism by which caseless constituents can be assigned default case, which (following a suggestion made by Radford 2016: 216) can be characterised as follows: (54)
24
25
Default Case Assignment/DCA A noun or pronoun expression which does not fall within the domain of (i.e. which is not locally c-commanded by) a case-assigner receives default case
If, however, in is simply a dummy (i.e. meaningless) case particle, one might argue that the KP analysis outlined in (53) violates the requirement in Chomsky (1995) for every head in a syntactic structure to carry some interpretable feature/s contributing to the semantic interpretation of the overall structure. After all, Chomsky used a similar argument against the postulation of AgrP/agreement phrase projections. On one implementation of this idea, a transitive preposition like in carries an uninterpretable accusative case feature which values the unvalued case feature on its complement and is subsequently deleted. However, this involves departing from the orthodox view that all uninterpretable features enter the derivation unvalued.
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As we saw in §2.5, the default forms who/which are used in resumptive relatives like those below: (55)
a. We spoke about Mahrez and Vardy, [who, they made a difference at the other end of the pitch] (Jamie Carragher, Sky Sports TV) b. He’s given the ball away to Hassan, [who, I certainly haven’t seen him for a while] (Alistair Bruce-Ball, BBC Radio 5) c. We were first introduced by a friend, [who, we will try to protect her privacy] (Prince Harry, BBC Radio 5) d. There was a lack of confidence in the organising committee, [which, it’s still there underneath the surface] (Gordon Farquar, BBC Radio 5) e. They’ve sent a statement through by the way, [which I’ll read it in a minute or two] (Stephen Nolan, BBC Radio 5) f. Mertens is not playing today, [which I agree with that] (Ray Parlour, Talksport Radio)
I argued in the previous chapter that in such structures, the relative pronoun is directly merged in a caseless position on the edge of the relative clause, and receives default case via DCA. Thus, if relative pronouns move without being assigned case, we would expect them to receive default case by DCA (and hence to be spelled out in their default forms like which/who), not to require the use of a dummy preposition like in as a case assigner. Moreover, the observation made by Riley and Parker (1986: 294) that intrusive in only occurs with the relative pronoun which (never with who/m) and the resulting string is frequently written as a single word inwhich suggests that in and which have fused into a single item. In this connection, it is interesting to note the following speculative remarks made by Mark Liberman in a (tongue-in-cheek) futuristic discussion of preposition doubling in a post on the Language Log: In the (I admit unlikely) event that this stylistically motivated, grammatically redundant marking of wh-words spreads, maybe English will develop case inflections all over again. English grammars of the 22nd century may cite the dative case of the relative pronoun twhich, and the benefactive fwhich. And the locative, nwhich. (Liberman 2007a)
(Here twhich originates as a contracted form of to which, fwhich of for which, and nwhich of in which.) A day later, Liberman elaborated on these remarks in the following terms: The idea behind this joke was that inflections sometimes develop from reanalysis of phonologically incorporated function words . . . and that redundant prepositions might be the leading edge of case-marking agreement (Liberman 2007b)
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162 Prepositional Relatives If we extend Liberman’s speculation still further, we might suppose that (i)nwhich originated as a locative pronoun which then got extended to accusative use and thus was able to relativise the object of a stranded preposition in sentences like (40, 41) above, and the object of a transitive verb in sentences like (42, 43). Indeed, it would seem that it is further extended to nominative use in examples like the following (56a being cited by Riley & Parker 1986: 294, and 56b–56f collected by Glenn Bingham from student assignments and reported in Liberman 2014): (56)
a. America . . . drove the Indians off land [in which was theirs] (= 3a) b. Sometimes people are born into a situation [in which may change who we really are] c. I believe the cosmological argument is a sound and simplistic argument [in which is really easy to understand] d. I believe we are born with innateness, [in which only takes us so far through life] e. . . . we usually do things that make us happy, such as eating food or having one more glass of wine, [in which we know is bad for us . . .] f. . . . students would be more efficient and interested in writing shorter assignments [in which grab their attention . . .]
It is unlikely that (as Riley and Parker claim) which would be assigned objective case by in here, since in each example it occurs in a nominative context as the subject of a finite verb; and it is equally unlikely that in which is a PP, since PPs don’t generally occur as subjects.26 On the contrary, it seems more likely that inwhich (for speakers who use it in the way described above) is best treated as a single word relativiser, and not a PP which comes about through a preposition insertion operation in the syntax. One possibility along these lines would be to treat inwhich as a novel relative pronoun that is used in essentially the same contexts as which is used in standard varieties of English. However, such an analysis would fail to account for Riley and Parker’s observation that inwhich is never used as the complement of a pied-piped preposition.27 An alternative analysis is suggested by 26
27
I set aside here exceptional cases like ‘In Paris seems to be where they first met’, discussed in Jaworska (1986). One way in which we might try and maintain the relative pronoun analysis is the following. Suppose that transitive prepositions assign either accusative or oblique case to their complements, and that prepositions assigning oblique case undergo pied-piping, but that those assigning accusative case do not. We can then suppose that inwhich is a relative pronoun which can spell out nominative or accusative case, but not oblique case. However, such an analysis requires us to posit a distinction between accusative and oblique case which seems otherwise unmotivated for English. It also requires us to explain why oblique (but not accusative) complements trigger pied-piping.
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a remark made by Glenn Bingham (cited in Liberman 2014) that inwhich is ‘substituted for the normal that’ and by the parallel remark by Catherine Rudin (likewise cited in Liberman 2014) that inwhich is ‘substituted for that’ and represents a ‘one-for-one exchange’. One way of interpreting these remarks is to suppose that by virtue of being a substitute for the complementiser that, the relativiser inwhich has become reanalysed as a relative wh-complementiser. This is by no means implausible, since we saw in §1.5 and §2.4 that some nonstandard varieties of colloquial English use what/where/whereby as a whcomplementiser in relative clauses. Analysing inwhich as a wh-complementiser would account for it having the same distribution as that, and thus occurring in the environments illustrated below (albeit in which is not written as a single word in 57a): (57)
a. America . . . drove the Indians off land [in which was theirs] b. It was a night [inwhich none of us will ever forget] c. . . . my leisure time [inwhich I had plenty of ]
(=3a/56a) (=42c) (=40b)
Thus, like that, the putative relative complementiser inwhich can be used to relativise a subject in (57a), the object of a verb in (57b), and the object of a stranded preposition in (57c). The key prediction of such an analysis is that by virtue of being a complementiser and not a relative pronoun, inwhich cannot be used as the complement of a pied-piped preposition, so that we don’t find structures like the following: (58)
* . . . my leisure time [of inwhich I had plenty (of)]
Since the complementiser that is subject to the same restriction, this is exactly what we would expect if inwhich is analysed by speakers of the intrusive in variety as a complementiser used to introduce a finite relative clause.28 But how could such a reanalysis come about? This is a question I will turn to consider in the next section. However, before doing so, I will briefly note that although my own broadcast English data do not contain any examples of intrusive in-relatives, they do contain 14 examples of relatives like the following, which could be taken to involve using of in a similar (intrusive) fashion: (59)
28
a. There’s another poll [of which the conservatives will be concerned about] (Eleanor Oldroyd, BBC Radio 5)
A potential complication is that Riley and Parker’s data would suggest that inwhich is only used where the antecedent is inanimate, and this might seem to favour analysing inwhich as an inanimate relative pronoun. Still, we could potentially get round this by positing that inwhich is associated with a null inanimate relative operator.
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164 Prepositional Relatives b. That was quite a good achievement, [of which I want to thank my team for] (Lord John Prescott, BBC Radio 5) c. We’ll have a right go at him in the second half, [of which we haven’t got long to wait for] (Alan Green, BBC Radio 5) d. These text parodies are something [of which KP has certainly got the hump with] (Ronnie Irani, Talksport Radio) e. The Monaco game [of which I was referring to] is coming up right after this (Commentator, BT Sport TV) f. We think that there are four added minutes, [of which we are almost half way through] (Martin Tyler, Sky Sports TV) g. He was a very difficult character, [of who they stuck with] (Ronnie Irani, Talksport Radio)
We might wonder whether intrusive of (in the use illustrated in 59 above) serves as a dummy preposition which has the function of assigning case to which/who, if for some reason the relative pronoun does not receive case from the preposition stranded at the end of the clause. There might then be potential parallels with using of to introduce the complement of prepositions like those boldprinted below: (60)
a. And I know it’s inside of me (Lyrics to a song by 3 Doors Down) b. Choosing to build a business outside of major U.S. metropolises has several benefits . . . (forbes.com) c. Many years ago, our kitten fell out of the window of our second-floor flat (mumsnet.com) d. Hey! You! Get off of my cloud! (Lyrics to a song by the Rolling Stones) e. If you’re driving from IV, the closest parking is NOT the one next to the gym but the one right across of it (ucsbreakin.weebly.com) f. Office Universal Apps planned for release alongside of Windows 10 (headline, itprotoday.com)
The bold-printed prepositions in (60) can be used both transitively (with a nominal complement, as in ‘It’s inside me’) and intransitively (as in ‘It’s inside’). It might therefore seem plausible to suppose that they are intransitive when followed by of, and that of is used as a way of assigning case to the (underlined) complement. However, while this type of syntactic analysis has some plausibility for sentences like those in (60), it is hard to see how it could be extended to sentences like those in (59). After all, the prepositions about/for/with/to/ through (in the uses illustrated above) are never used intransitively (cf. *‘Roy would know about’) and are never used with of (cf. ‘Roy knows about of that’/ *‘Of that, Roy knows about’). In short, prepositions like those in (59) are obligatorily transitive and there would therefore be no plausible reason for
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them to require of to be used to case-mark their complement. In addition, any syntactic of-insertion analysis would run into precisely the same theoretical and empirical objections as were earlier levelled against Riley and Parker’s ininsertion analysis. (I will return to consider how best to analyse examples like those in 59 in §3.6.).29 To summarise: this section began with an outline of Riley and Parker’s (1986) attempt to develop a unitary case-marking analysis of preposition doubling and preposition intrusion, under which the pronoun which fails to be assigned case in its initial position, and a preposition is inserted in the syntax in front of which in order to assign case to which (either a copy of the preposition whose complement is being relativised, or an intrusive dummy preposition like in). I went on to argue that their Case Assigner Insertion analysis is untenable for both theoretical and empirical reasons, that preposition doubling involves spelling out the highest and lowest copies of a fronted preposition, and that intrusive in-relatives involve reanalysis of inwhich as a relative complementiser. However, these conclusions raise the question of how preposition doubling and the reanalysis of inwhich as a relative complementiser come about. In the next section, I explore the possibility of a sociolinguistic analysis under which they arise as a result of hypercorrection.
29
Further spurious uses of the preposition of in my data appear in the following examples: (i) (ii) (iii)
There were three conditions, [of which I supposedly fulfilled them all] (Surgeon, BBC Radio 5) There are some unbelievable events in September [of which we’re gonna be covering here on Talksport] (Adam Catterel, Talksport Radio) He decided to play a completely different style, [of which is paying dividends] (Presenter, Talksport Radio)
However, these may well be sporadic speech errors. For example, the bracketed relative clause in (i) may represent a blend between the gap relative in (iv) below and the resumptive relative in (v): (iv) (v)
of which I supposedly fulfilled all which I supposedly fulfilled them all
Likewise, the relative clause in (ii) may represent a blend between (vi) and (vii) below: (vi) (vii)
which we’re going to be covering here on Talksport of which we’re going to be covering many here on Talksport
And the relative clause in (iii) may represent a blend between (viii) and (ix) below: (viii) which is paying dividends (ix) of which he is reaping the dividends
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166 Prepositional Relatives 3.5
Preposition Doubling and Intrusion as Hypercorrection
In this section, I look at the possibility of developing a sociolinguistic account of preposition doubling and intrusion which sees them as instances of hypercorrection. The term hypercorrection is defined by Decamp (1972: 87) as ‘an incorrect analogy with a form in a prestige dialect which the speaker has imperfectly mastered’. Hypercorrection has its roots in the (conscious or subconscious) linguistic insecurity of speakers, and Baron (1984: 228) argues that this insecurity derives from two factors – namely ‘the ranking of social and geographical dialects as superior and inferior, and an educational system based on a doctrine of correctness and purity in language that invariably conflicts with the observable facts of English usage’. The idea that doubled and intrusive prepositions are the result of hypercorrection has a long history dating back to Shaughessy (1977), Smith (1981), and Free (1982). Riley and Parker (1986: 296) summarise the key assumptions underlying the hypercorrection hypothesis in the following terms: First, students are attempting to achieve a more formal style in teacherdirected writing. Second, students associate a fronted preposition with a more formal style. Therefore, they tend to use fronted prepositions in teacher-directed writing . . . These writers are trying (unsuccessfully) to emulate a more formal style, an effort which results in structural hypercorrection.
In a similar vein, Liberman (2014) reports the following suggestion made by Glenn Bingham: Glenn’s diagnosis is that these examples arise by way of an attempt to ‘sound erudite’ by adding an extra preposition at the start of a relative clause, thus yielding a formal sounding collocation like in which without any grammatical license. He sees this as a hypercorrection . . .
This essentially sociostylistic view of doubled and intrusive prepositions has been reiterated by numerous people in more recent discussion in Mark Liberman’s (2007a, 2007b, 2007c, 2007d, 2014) postings on the Language Log, including by Catherine Rudin in the following comments cited in Liberman (2014): 20 years ago, I collected dozens of examples very similar to those Glenn Bingham presents, mostly from the writing of college freshmen (collecting them helped me survive teaching composition), with a few from situations like radio interviews where it seemed like the speaker might be striving for a more than usually elevated tone. When I first started seeing things like ‘the town in which I grew up in’ in student essays I assumed they were just errors –
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the writer waffled between ‘in which I grew up’ and ‘(which/that) I grew up in’ and didn’t proofread well enough to notice the resulting extra preposition. But some had apparently random prepositions, and a fair number had ‘in which’ written as a single word in situations with no reasonable source for ‘in’. Eventually I got curious enough to interview a bunch of the student writers, and it turned out they didn’t see these as errors at all. Almost none of them saw anything wrong with the sentences they’d written and a surprising number commented that the sentences with ‘inwhich’ or doubled prepositions sounded better (more sophisticated, literary, educated) than the corrected versions I proposed.
Rudin too reaches the conclusion that these constructions represent ‘a hypercorrection – an attempt to sound erudite’. However, Riley and Parker (1986: 297) counter that the hypercorrection analysis is questionable in that it raises the issue of why, if college students pied-pipe the preposition in order to emulate high style, they also strand the preposition (which Riley and Parker take to be a mark of low style), so leading to a stylistic clash which would be expected to cause the derivation to crash and thus yield an unacceptable output. Nonetheless, it seems to me that this objection can be overcome in a fairly straightforward fashion. Suppose that individuals who double prepositions correctly identify high spellout/pied-piping of prepositions as characteristic of formal styles. Suppose, however, that they have not acquired the contextual restriction on low spellout/pied-piping of prepositions, and have not identified that it is restricted to use in non-formal styles,30 and consequently impose no restrictions on the style/register in which it can be used (i.e. they treat it as a form which is stylistically neutral and so can be used in any style). This may perhaps come about because they observe prepositions being stranded in high status outputs such as news broadcasts on TV, and conclude that low spellout/ stranding can apply in any style. For speakers who allow low spellout/stranding to apply in any style, nothing prevents them from producing preposition doubling structures such as the following (cf. 27b above): (61)
30
The plea agreement, [RELP into which [REL ø] he entered into which reluctantly] . . .
The binary distinction drawn here between formal/high and non-formal/low styles is simplified for expository purposes. Hilpert (2013) draws a ternary distinction between high-level, midlevel and low-level registers, and reports that out of 791 cases of low spellout/P-stranding in the corpus he searched, 540 (68.3%) occurred in the low-level register, 218 (27.6%) in the mid-level register and 33 (4.2%) in the high-level register.
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168 Prepositional Relatives A structure like (61) utilises both the high spellout/pied-piping characteristic of high styles, and the low spellout/stranding which speakers of doubling varieties take to be stylistically neutral, and hence to be admissible in high and low styles alike. Such an analysis sees the essence of preposition doubling as the hypercorrect conjunctive use of two (high and low) spellout patterns which are disjunctive alternatives for speakers of standard varieties of English. This is consistent with the idea put forward by King (1969: 68–71) that hypercorrection involves ‘an inorganic and somewhat ephemeral superstructure built onto the firmer foundation of a grammar acquired through the normal process of language acquisition’ (with high spellout being a superstructure imposed onto a foundation of low spellout). The hypercorrect use of low spellout in structures in which high spellout also occurs results from the relevant speakers not having acquired the contextual restriction on low spellout which restricts it to use in non-formal style.31 There are potential parallels here with cases of adposition doubling arising through code mixing in bilinguals, in phrases such as those bracketed below: (62)
a. Mutta se oli kidney-sta [to aorta-an] But it was kidney-from to aorta-to ‘But it was from the kidney to the aorta.’ (Finnish–English, Poplack, Wheeler & Westwood 1989: 404) b. look at the things she buys [ for Sean ni] look at the things she buys for Sean for ‘Look at the things she buys for Sean.’ (English–Japanese, Nishimura 1986: 140)
Here, the bracketed PPs involve an English preposition combined with a synonymous Finnish or Japanese postposition. Nishimura (1995: 166–8) argues that speakers who produce such structures are employing a ‘reachout strategy’ which involves simultaneously accommodating two types of listeners. But whereas structures like those in (62) arise through the mixing of structures from two different languages, the cases we are concerned with here arise from the mixing of structures from two different styles/registers of the same language. Just as preposition doubling could be argued to arise through hypercorrection, so too the reanalysis of inwhich as a relative complementiser could likewise arise through hypercorrection. To see how, consider sentences such as the following: 31
It should be noted that the hypercorrection analysis outlined here is neutral between whether doubling involves the copying operation outlined in §3.2 or the splitting operation outlined in §3.3.
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a. My dad was so passionate about the place [that he was born] that he researched the history of it and wrote a book about it (lovedandlostproject.co.uk) b. . . . I’m a sucker for the way [that you move, babe] (from the song Never Be the Same by Camila Cabello) c. Our society is evolving into an era [that people consume a lot of information online] (sites.psu.edu) d. I would just hope that if it is, indeed, the direction [that they went], those events would be used with care (carillomregina.com)
It may be that prescriptive educators teaching written composition instil into students the need to replace that in such sentences by in which (and indeed Joseph Galasso pers. comm. confirms this in relation to American students of his). The students may interpret this as (to use the term employed by Rudin in the relevant passage cited above) a ‘one-for-one-exchange’, and thus treat inwhich as a (single-word) complementiser which replaces the complementiser that in high style.32 On this view, inwhich is a hypercorrect wh-complementiser which comes about by overgeneralisation of a prescriptive rule (‘Replace that by in which in high style’). Potential parallels can be drawn here with the use of I and whom in sentences such as the following: (64)
a. Give Al Gore and I a chance (Bill Clinton, campaigning in 1992; ft.com) b. Between you and me, the phrase ‘between you and I’ grates on my ears like nails on a chalkboard (elearnenglishlanguage.com) b. Will it be Danny? If not, whom? (headline from the Milwaulkee Journal Sentinel; mr-verb.blogspot.co.uk) c. Whom will it be? (english.stackexchange.com)
These are widely considered prototypical cases of hypercorrection.33 They are generally taken to arise because students are taught to replace me by I in sentences like (65a) below, and who by whom in sentences like (65b): (65)
32
a. You and me have a lot in common b. He is someone for who loyalty is important
There may be parallels with the prepositional relative whereby apparently coming to function as a complementiser in resumptive relatives such as the following (discussed in §2.4): (i)
33
I think there are a lot of managers [whereby you’re not a hundred percent sure whether they’re going to be there next year] (Ian Abrahams, Talksport Radio) On the hypercorrect use of I in forms like between you and I see Schwartz (1985), Emonds (1986), Parker, Riley & Meyer (1988), Walsh & Walsh (1989), Al-Banyan & Preston (1998), Johannessen (1998), Boyland (2001), Angermeyer & Singler (2003), Quinn (2005), Zwicky (2005), Grano (2006) and Shepherd (2014). On the hypercorrect use of whom see Sobin (1997), Lasnik & Sobin (2000) and Schepps (2010).
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170 Prepositional Relatives Hypercorrect uses of I, whom and inwhich can be given a unitary account if we suppose that they arise from students learning prescriptive rules like those below, but not mastering the contextual restrictions shown : (66)
i. ii. iii.
Replace me by I after and in high style Replace who by whom in high style Replace relative that by inwhich in high style 34
Overgeneralising the rules in (66i) and (66ii) from nominative/accusative contexts to any context (by virtue of not applying the angle-bracketed contextual restrictions) results in the hypercorrect uses we find in (65). Similarly, overgeneralising the rule in (66iii) by not applying the angle-bracketed contextual restriction will give rise to hypercorrect forms like those below: (67)
a. America . . . drove the Indians off land [in which was theirs] b. It was a night [inwhich none of us will ever forget] c. . . . my leisure time [in which I had plenty of ]
(=56a) (=42c) (=40b)
On this view, hypercorrection results from overgeneralising prescriptive rules to inappropriate contexts, by virtue of not having mastered contextual restrictions on the use of the rules. This accords with the claim made by Shepherd (2014: 81) that ‘Hypercorrection occurs when a speaker overextends a prescriptive rule and applies it in an inappropriate context.’ This claim is equally consistent with the hypercorrection account of preposition doubling given at the beginning of this section, whereby preposition doubling arises from not mastering the contextual restriction on low spellout/stranding (to the effect that it is restricted to non-formal styles). Although the account outlined above sounds plausible enough, it implicitly treats preposition doubling as arising from a form of code mixing, where the two different registers of the same language are mixed, resulting in the formation of a hybrid code. However, this is a potentially problematic assumption for the following reason. Emonds (1986) argues at length that prescriptive rules are explicit rules that are unnatural (in the sense that they do not conform to universal principles governing the kind of operations found in natural language grammars) and consequently they cannot be part of a linguistic code subconsciously internalised by native speakers. For this reason, he characterizes them as ‘extragrammatical’ – i.e. lying outside the grammar itself.
34
The contextual restrictions here are simplified for expository purposes. ‘Oblique’ can be taken to mean ‘locative, temporal or manner contexts’, or more properly contexts where in would be used in non-relative clauses.
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One implementation of this idea is to see prescriptive rules as stylistic editing or monitoring rules which are applied to the output of native grammars, with the aim of replacing low prestige forms by high prestige forms. This would mean that preposition doubling is not a natural language phenomenon, but rather is the result of an artificial attempt to edit a sentence and make it more prestigious. In the terminology of Sobin (1997) and Lasnik & Sobin (2000), prescriptive rules (on this view) would introduce grammatical viruses into native structures. Our discussion here of whether prescriptive rules are intragrammatical (i.e. an integral part of competence grammars) or extragrammatical (i.e. independent of them) has overtones of the debate in second language/L2 acquisition research about the relationship between explicit knowledge of rules and underlying competence.35 There are two views on this issue. One (dating back to research by Krashen 1981) proposes a distinction between ‘acquisition’ (unconscious linguistic knowledge that develops through spontaneous contact with comprehensible input) and ‘learning’ (conscious linguistic knowledge gained from teachers, textbooks and grammars). Learned linguistic knowledge (in Krashen’s view) never initiates spontaneous use of the language but it can act as a ‘monitor’ during language production to change output from the competence grammar. For Krashen, learned linguistic knowledge never turns into acquired knowledge – a view sometimes referred to as the non-interface hypothesis. An alternative view (represented in the work of DeKeyser 2003, 2007), is that L2 learners can establish explicit and implicit linguistic knowledge, where ‘Implicit learning is learning without awareness of what you’re learning and explicit learning is learning with awareness of what you are learning’ (DeKeyser 2010: 14); thus, ‘implicit’ essentially corresponds to Krashen’s ‘acquisition’ and ‘explicit’ to Krashen’s ‘learning’. For DeKeyser explicit knowledge can turn into implicit knowledge indirectly through conscious learning about the second language that then becomes proceduralised through practice via a process of automatisation (McLaughlin, 1987), so that initially explicit information will eventually turn into implicit knowledge. Looked at from this perspective, the issue that arises is whether the hypercorrect use of doubled and intrusive prepositions which concerns us here is the product of explicit or implicit knowledge. In this connection, it is important to bear in mind three conditions which Krashen sees as necessary for learned knowledge to act as a monitor: the speaker must consciously know the rule, the 35
I am grateful to Roger Hawkins for informing the discussion here.
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172 Prepositional Relatives speaker will be focused on producing a grammatically accurate construction, and there must be sufficient time for monitoring to occur. Much of the evidence of preposition doubling and intrusion in Riley & Parker (1986) and in Liberman’s postings on the Language Log comes from written student assignments. This type of output satisfies Krashen’s criteria for the use of learned knowledge, in that the students are conscious of having been taught rules about how to use prepositions in formal styles, they are focused on ‘attempting to achieve a more formal style in teacher-directed writing’ (Riley & Parker 1986: 296), and they have the time to monitor (and edit) their output. In this connection, it is interesting to note that the use of intrusive in reported by Riley and Parker seems to be uniquely associated with written work, suggesting that it may indeed be the result of hypercorrect application of learned knowledge. By contrast, my own data on preposition doubling are mostly taken from live, unscripted radio and TV broadcasts where (e.g.) commentators are focused on (and often excited about) the action in front of them and the pressures of live broadcasting mean that it is unlikely that they have the time to monitor and edit their output. More generally, this means that preposition doubling in spontaneous speech output is unlikely to be the result of hypercorrect application of explicit editing rules. Rather, it is more likely to stem from another source (perhaps speech errors – a possibility discussed in the next section). Moreover, even the possibility that preposition intrusion may be the result of the hypercorrect reanalysis of inwhich as a complementiser is called into question by the observation that numerous subsequent studies have shown that it isn’t just the specific preposition in which is found in cases of preposition intrusion. For example, Liberman (2007d) reports that Glenn Bingham collected the following examples from student assignments of the intrusive use of prepositions other than in to relativise the subject or object of a verb: (68)
a. Empiricists believe that the mind, upon its creation, is a ‘blank slate’ [ for which we fill up through our experiences and senses] b. Likewise, the attitude and setting of males and females within television advertising contributes to the commercials [with which they represent], as well as the frequency of viewing c. There is no point to reach for that [of which is beyond us as humans] d. . . . there must exist something [of which is necessary] e. . . . there was a mix of species and sexes [ from which you could not tell apart] f. You say that you want us to find insightful parts that we enjoy and then to find any parts [by which we believe are weak] g. To attain the EXACT amount of calories, you would have to weigh off each ingredient grain by grain, [to which is impossible]
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Likewise, prepositions other than in have been reported to be used in preposition mismatch structures like the following in earlier varieties of English:36 (69) a. Ne nis na ϸing [hwerϸurh monnes muchele madschipe wreððeð Not isn’t no thing where-through man’s great madness angers him wið] mare ϸen ϸet shafte of mon him with more than that creation of man (13c. Seinte Katerine) b. of him [to whom he had most his trust on] (Caxton, 15th c.) c. Furthermore, Sir, if it please you to understand of the great unkindnes that my grandam hath showed unto me now latly, as the bringer herof can more planly shew you by muth, [to whom I besech you to take credence on] (17c, Germayn Poley) d. an occurrence [ for which they have been . . . in patient expectation of ] (Goldsmith, 18c.)
Moreover, similar examples have been reported in present-day English, as the examples below illustrate (70a, 70b sourced from the internet by me, and 70c–70g collected from student assignments by Glenn Bingham and reported in Liberman 2014): (70)
a. It depends on the newspapers [with which you are reading them in] (student assignment, linguistlaura.blogspot.co.uk) b. Grammar is a subject [with which I have a knack for] (Watch your language, itotd.com) c. These imperatives were based around a set of principles of rules [to which all aspects had to agree with in order for them to be good by nature] d. . . . women . . . were thought of as silly little playthings [ for which men fought over] . . . e. . . . their main difference was their stance on which primary substance was the source [of which the earth was derived from] f. . . . there is a particular goal [ for which we act on] g. Our primary goal is to provide the children with a firm academic foundation [with which they can build upon . . .]
Nonetheless, before rushing to the conclusion that preposition mismatch relatives like those in (68–70) undermine the reanalysis account of intrusive prepositions outlined in §3.4 or the hypercorrection account in this section, we need to bear in mind an important point raised by Liberman (2007a) in his discussion of the following example of preposition doubling uncovered from a written source by Patrick McCormick: (71)
36
. . . not all databases provide sufficient information . . . to determine the table [to which a column belongs to]
(69a, 69c) are examples collected by David Denison/Nuria Yáñez-Bouza cited in Liberman (2007b), and (69b, 69d) are from Bergh (1998).
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174 Prepositional Relatives Liberman writes: The trouble with examples like these is that they may come from editing errors, where the author (for example) writes ‘the table that a column belongs to’ and then on a subsequent editing pass decides not to strand the preposition, and so changes ‘that’ to ‘to which’, but forgets to remove the other copy of ‘to’.
This calls into question the use of evidence from non-canonical uses of prepositions in written texts, since these may indeed be the result of editing errors. However, it should be noted that my own broadcast English data (mainly taken from live, unscripted broadcasts where editing problems do not arise) contain 33 examples of preposition mismatch structures. Fourteen of these involve the use of intrusive of in sentences like those in (59) above, while a further 15 involve interchangeable prepositions like those italicised below: (72)
a. There are issues [on which you agree with the Labour Party leader over] (Norman Smith, BBC1 TV) b. They are games [in which Paul Lambert will feel he can get something from] (Alan Smith, Sky Sports TV) c. Things went slightly wonky at Chelsea because of the conditions [in which they were working under] (Ray Wilkins, Talksport Radio) d. Every sport needs some powerhouse [with which other teams can measure their success by] (Russell Fuller, BBC Radio 5) e. The thing you have to watch with Portugal is the speed [with which they play at] (Andy Townsend, ITV)
The italicised prepositions in (72) are interchangeable in the sense that either member of each pair would be appropriate in the relative clauses in question. Similar examples of mismatched preposition structures involving interchangeable prepositions have been reported in other studies, as the examples below illustrate: (73)
a. It was a mystery [of which he knew nothing about] (Lee 2009) b. . . . he had jokingly dropped cutlery onto the table of a couple [with whom he had been chatting to] (BBC News website; Liberman 2007d) c. Thales believed that the substance [out of which all living things came from] was water (student assignment collected by Glenn Bingham, reported in Liberman 2014) d. he made the clothis, [with whiche Aaron was clothid yn] ‘he made the clothes in which Aaron was dressed.’ (14 c. Holy Bible, Exodus 39:1, cited in Nykiel 2010)
The wide variety of prepositions found in such structures makes it highly unlikely that they involve all the relevant preposition+which structures
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undergoing hypercorrect reanalysis as relative complementisers (including bywhich, forwhich, fromwhich, onwhich, towhich, withwhich, ofwhich, outofwhich etc.). This is made even more unlikely by the observation that the intrusive prepositions occur in front of whom in (69b, 69c, 73b), and whom is clearly a pronoun since it carries the pronominal accusative case suffix -m. But if the intrusive prepositions found in sentences like (68–73) are not the result of hypercorrect reanalysis, how do they come about? An alternative possibility explored in the next section is that they are accidental speech errors. And if intrusive prepositions are indeed the result of speech errors, this raises the question of whether doubled prepositions could arise in the same way. To summarise: in this section, I have discussed the possibility that doubled and intrusive prepositions may arise as a result of hypercorrection (whether through a form of code-mixing in which a high style structure is mixed with a neutral style structure, or through explicit extragrammatical monitoring/ editing rules applied to the output of native grammars). I noted that a codemixing analysis is problematic in the light of Emonds’ (1986) claim that prescriptive rules are unnatural and extragrammatical, and the related claim made by Sobin (1997) and Lasnik & Sobin (2000) that they are viral. I also noted that the possibility of preposition doubling and intrusion arising through the application of extragrammatical monitoring/editing rules has some plausibility for written forms of output (e.g. student assignments which may be graded in part on their written style) but is far less plausible for spontaneous speech output (especially when, as in the case of my broadcast English data, the output is produced in a situation where commentators are under time pressures in describing the action in fast-moving games, and are more focused on action than on syntax). Having cast doubt on whether the hypercorrection analysis can account for the full range of data considered here, I now turn (in the next section) to consider the alternative possibility that doubled and intrusive prepositions may be speech errors. 3.6
Preposition Doubling and Intrusion as Speech Errors
A long-standing account of doubled and intrusive prepositions is that they are the result of sporadic speech errors, perhaps resulting from a memory lapse. In this connection, it is interesting to note the claim made by Poutsma (1914: I.i. ch. VIII. §92) that extra prepositions arise when the speaker has ‘lost distinct remembrance of the way in which he has started his utterance’. On one variant
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176 Prepositional Relatives of the memory lapse account, speakers forget that they have pied-piped a preposition along with the relative pronoun, and consequently spell out a second copy of the preposition at the end of the relative clause. Thus, Riley & Parker (1986: 298) remark that ‘One might hypothesize that the writer fronted the preposition but forgot that it had been fronted, and so reintroduced it at the end of the relative clause’. Since my own data are taken largely from live broadcasts and thus produced in situations of high processing pressure (with limited opportunity for speakers to plan their utterances very far ahead), it seems plausible to suppose that preposition doubling and intrusion may well be the result of speech production errors facilitated by a relatively high processing load. A memory lapse account would provide a potentially plausible account for preposition doubling, as can be illustrated in relation to the relative clause bracketed below: (74)
Israeli soldiers fired an anti-tank missile and hit a police post [in which the Palestinian policeman who was killed had been in] (=6c)
Under the memory lapse account, the subject who produced this example initially fronted the preposition in, but when arriving at the end of the relative clause forgot that he had done so and so spelled out another copy of the preposition in situ at the end of the clause, thereby giving rise to preposition doubling. The memory lapse account could also be extended to cases of mismatched preposition relatives like that below which involve interchangeable prepositions: (75)
There are issues [on which you agree with the Labour Party leader over] (=72a)
The prepositions on/over are interchangeable here in the sense that either preposition could mark the grammatical function of the relativised constituent within the relative clause in question (e.g. you can agree with someone on or over something). In cases like (75), one might suppose that the speaker not only forgets that he has fronted the preposition, but also forgets which of the two prepositions he used. Such an account could also be extended to other structures involving mismatching interchangeable prepositions like those in (72, 73) above. Furthermore, the memory lapse account could be extended to account for the intrusive use of the preposition of in relatives like those bracketed below: (76)
a. That was a week [of which we look back on and we will remember] (Georgie Bingham, Talksport Radio) b. MLS when it started in 1996 saw the NASL as a failure [of which they didn’t want to be reminded of or compared to] (Sean Wheelock, BBC Radio 5)
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It could well be that by the time the relevant speakers came to the end of the first relative clause, they had forgotten that they had used of at the beginning of the clause, and continued both of the coordinate relatives as if they had only used which, so that which serves as the complement of both on and remember in (76a), and of both of and to in (76b). Furthermore, the memory lapse account correctly predicts that alongside structures containing doubled prepositions we will also find prepositional relatives like those below in which the complement of a preposition is relativised, and yet the preposition (enclosed in angle brackets below) is missing/ unpronounced: (77)
a. And of course he got one of the three goals [which Spurs beat Burnley ] (Danny Kelly, Talksport Radio) b. You’re talking about a collision injury [which top class players are getting million pound treatment these days] (Simon Jordan, Talksport Radio) c. I think the way the clubs have gone, [which I don’t agree ], they need to focus on the future (Barry Cowan, Talksport Radio) d. Here’s a Premier League club [who we didn’t know the exact shareholder base ] (Danny Kelly, Talksport Radio) e. I watched Andy Murray, [who I’m a huge fan ] (Barry McGuigan, Sky Sports TV) f. We’ll probably have the same conversation about the same big three, [who last summer all the clubs said ‘No’ ] (Micky Quinn, Talksport Radio; three = ‘three players’)
Under the memory lapse account, such ‘missing preposition’ structures arise when speakers mistakenly think they have fronted the preposition and so do not spell out the in situ copy of the preposition enclosed in angle brackets. Thus, by hypothesis, the speaker in (77a) mistakenly thinks he started the relative clause with by which and accordingly does not spell out the angle-bracketed lower copy of by which would be expected to appear at the end of the clause. I shall say no more about missing preposition structures here, since they are discussed at length in Chapter 4. Suffice it to note for present purposes that preposition omission could plausibly be attributed to a memory lapse.37 37
It may well be that the hesitation before the preposition in the bracketed relative clause below (where . . . represents a pause about a second long): (i) It’s the kind of talent [she is used to competing . . . against] (Gabby Logan, BBC2 TV) is also indicative of memory problems, with the speaker unsure whether she had started the bracketed relative clause with against which.
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178 Prepositional Relatives There are other considerations too which lend further plausibility to the memory lapse account. For one thing, such an analysis would account for why (by virtue of being a sporadic speech error) preposition doubling, intrusion and omission have a very low frequency of occurrence in English: as noted in §3.2, in a corpus survey of Kenyan English, Hoffman (2011: 119) reports that out of 1,308 prepositional relatives in the corpus only 14 (1.1%) involved preposition doubling, only 22 (1.7%) involved a missing preposition, and only 18 (1.4%) involved the use of an inappropriate preposition.38 The low frequency of occurrence of the relevant phenomena lends credence to the idea that they are sporadic production errors. The memory lapse account would (on certain plausible assumptions) lead us to expect to find a length effect in cases of preposition doubling. Research by Staum Casasanto & Sag (2008b) has shown that the acceptability of complementiser doubling increases as the number of words intervening between the two complementisers increases. Thus, a sentence like (78b) below where seven (underlined) words intervene between the two (italicised) complementisers was judged significantly more acceptable than a sentence like (78a) where there is only one intervening word: (78)
a. John reminded Mary that soon that his brother would be ready to leave b. John reminded Mary that after he was finished with his meeting that his brother would be ready to leave
Such an effect might be attributed to a memory lapse if we suppose that the more words that intervene between the two complementisers, the more likely it is that the subjects will forget that they have already produced an earlier copy of the complementiser. If we hypothesise that a similar length effect would be expected to show up in production data, we should expect preposition doubling to occur more frequently in clauses where there is a relatively long string (say, seven or more words) between the two doubled prepositions, as noted by Yáñez-Bouza (2007). However, Nykiel (2010) reports that there is no evidence of a length effect in cases of preposition doubling in earlier varieties of English. More specifically, she writes the following (Nykiel 2010: 151–2): There is little, if any, support for an interaction between locality and extra prepositions. The distance between the doubled prepositions ranges from 38
Hoffmann (2011: 113) gives the following example of the use of an inappropriate preposition (where to is used in place of in/under): (i)
Hostels no longer provide conditions [to which students can study efficiently]
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three to twelve words, while that between the mismatched prepositions (of which there are only three examples) is either four or five . . . There is a tendency for extra prepositions separated by longer distances to have the lowest frequencies in the corpus – the reverse of what Staum [Casasanto] and Sag (2008b) argue for. 39
To test for a possible length effect in the preposition doubling structures in my own data, I calculated the intervening string length/ISL (i.e. the number of words intervening between the two prepositions) in the 112 structures in my data which involve doubled prepositions. The results are presented in tabular form below: (79)
Number/percentage of preposition doubling structures with a given ISL
ISL
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10–12
No.
2
3
36
28
18
7
8
4
3
1
1.8
2.7
32.1
25
16.1
6.3
7.1
3.6
2.7
0.9
%
These figures should be read as follows. Two of the 112 examples of prepositional doubling structures (1.8%) had an ISL of 1 (i.e. in 2 examples there was only one word intervening between the two occurrences of the preposition); three examples (2.7%) had an ISL of 2; 36 examples (32.1%) had an ISL of 3 . . . and so on.40 The mean ISL for all 112 examples was 4.5, and in 94/112 (83.9%) of cases the ISL was below the threshold figure of 7 taken by Staum Casasanto and Sag to be indicative of a length effect. Moreover, 69/112 (61.6%) of doubling structures had four or fewer words intervening between the two prepositions. These figures appear to show no clear evidence of a length effect.41 39
40
41
I have abridged this citation in inconsequential ways by omitting the four example sentences Nykiel gives to illustrate her point, and the numerical cross-references she gives to them. To save space, I have given a mean figure in the rightmost column for the number/percentage of examples with an ISL of between 10 and 12: in actual fact, 2 examples had an ISL of 10, 0 of 11, and 1 of 12. In the calculations presented here, I followed Staum Casasanto & Sag in computing the length of an intervening string in terms of the number of overt words it contains, although I acknowledge that (as pointed out by Stephen Crain pers. comm.), this is less satisfactory than computing length in terms of the number of syllables, segments, or seconds. In the case of examples like the following (from a form issued by my local council): (i)
To which of these groups do you consider that you belong to?
I included the other (underlined) constituents of the wh-phrase as intervening constituents, so that the intervening string length in (i) is 10 words. I have counted contracted forms like it’s/I’m/ we’re etc. as two words. Note that ISL is a very crude measure if computed in terms of the number of overt words intervening between the two prepositions. To see why, consider the wh-phrase italicised below:
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180 Prepositional Relatives But is there a length effect in structures containing mismatching prepositions? Here, I have much less data to work with, since there were only 33 cases of mismatching preposition structures in my data. The results for these are summarised in tabular form below: (80)
Number and percentage of preposition mismatch structures with a given ISL
ISL
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
No.
9
8
3
5
4
3
1
27.3
24.2
9.1
15.2
12.1
9.1
3.0
%
Once again, however, there seems to be no clear evidence of a length effect: for example, in 17/33 (51.5%) of structures there were only 3 or 4 words intervening between the mismatched prepositions. On the other hand, the mean ISL was 5.0 for preposition mismatch structures, and this is somewhat higher than the mean of 4.2 for preposition doubling structures – but with relatively few examples of mismatch structures in my data, the comparison may well not be robust.42 The data presented in (79, 80) cast doubt on whether preposition doubling and mismatching really do arise because a substantial amount of intervening material leads speakers to forget whether or not they fronted the preposition, or even what preposition they used. Moreover, simply forgetting what preposition was used and whether or not it was fronted would not account for many structures with intrusive prepositions, if we set aside cases which involve interchangeable prepositions (which can indeed potentially be treated as instances of forgetting what preposition is being used and whether it has been
(ii) Will there be a demand? And if so, from where from and at what price? (seafish.org) Here, there is only one overt word intervening between the two occurences of from. However, if from where from is a sluiced/elliptical clause, it will have the fuller structure below (with strikethrough marking words present in the syntax but given a null spellout in the phonology): (iii) from where will there be a demand from where
42
One could then argue that there are six words (rather than one) intervening between the two occurences of from – though (because I have counted only overt words) I have not made this assumption here. However, even if we include ‘silent’ constituents in our count, ISL remains a very crude measure because it does not take into account structural complexity. More importantly, it could be argued that (in attempting to establish whether or not there is a possible length effect), we should compare the percentage of ‘short’ clauses which show doubling/mismatching with the percentage of ‘long’ clauses which show doubling/mismatching. I am unable to do this for my data, since I collected only examples of non-canonical prepositional structures, not examples of canonical ones.
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fronted, as noted in relation to our earlier discussion of 75 above).43 By way of illustration, consider a mismatching preposition structure like that below: (81)
We think that there are four added minutes, [of which we are almost half way through] (Martin Tyler, Sky Sports TV)
Here, of is not interchangeable with through, since we can use through but not of in a sentence like ‘We are almost half way through/*of the four added minutes’. Hence it is implausible to claim that such a sentence arises as a result of the commentator simply forgetting that he had fronted the preposition, and also forgetting which of two equivalent prepositions he had used. Nevertheless, such sentences have the feel of speech errors. But if they don’t involve memory lapse, what other kind of speech error might they involve? A plausible answer is that the relative clause bracketed in (81) represents a blend between the two alternative target relative clause structures bracketed below:44 (82)
We think that there are four added minutes a. [of which we are through almost half ―] b. [which we are almost half way through ―]
The blend in (81) arises from splicing the first part of the relative clause in (82a) with the second part of the relative clause in (82b). For obvious reasons, Fay (1981) calls this a splice blend, and Coppock (2006: 241) remarks that ‘A splice blend is formed by taking an initial sequence from one target and a final sequence from another target’. Such a blend analysis would be consistent with the proposal made by Fay (1981) to analyse a wide range of different types of doubling as blends, including particle doubling in sentences like (83a) below, and adverb doubling in sentences like (83b) – and indeed a blend analysis might be extended to other types of doubling found in my broadcast English data, such as infinitiviser doubling in (83c), auxiliary doubling in (83d), article doubling in (83e), noun doubling in (83f), benefactive doubling in (83g), and disjunctive doubling in (83h):45 43
44
45
I will also set aside here cases of intrusive in which involve reanalysis of inwhich as a novel relative complementiser: see the discussion in §3.4. On blends, see Bolinger (1961), Fay (1981), Stemberger (1982), Cohen (1987), Cutting & Bock (1997), Coppock (2006, 2010). Note that it isn’t only doubling structures which can be analysed in terms of blending. For example, a blend analysis might also be proposed for non-doubling structures such as the following found in my broadcast English data: (i) The players know what a kind of slump they’re in (Laura Woods, Talksport Radio) (ii) We look at Arsenal and we see what the squad they have (Steve Claridge, BBC Radio 5)
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182 Prepositional Relatives (83)
a. Would you turn on the light on? (Fay 1981: 718) b. You always get the pimply-faced boys that haven’t quite yet matured yet (ibid.) c. We need to continually to look at the danger of nuclear power (Lord Adair Turner, BBC Radio 5) d. That would have normally have been a yellow card for the Watford man (Ian Darke, BT Sport TV) e. It looks like a quite a good deal (Jason Burt, Talksport Radio) f. Manchester City have agreed a fee of 28 million fee with Swansea for Wilfried Bony (Alan Brazil, Talksport Radio) g. At Swansea, he could have made himself a really big name for himself (Listener, Talksport Radio) h. He doesn’t know whether or not he’s offside or not (Andy Goldstein, Talksport Radio)
Fay defines a blend in the following terms: A blend occurs when a speaker has in mind simultaneously two ways of expressing the same message. Instead of one or the other expression being used, they are combined in some way to give a new, synthesized utterance that does not match exactly either of the intended expressions (Fay 1981: 739)
Riley and Parker (1986) argue that Fay’s blend account of doubling can be extended to account for prepositional doubling in relative clauses. More specifically, they suggest that a preposition doubling relative clause like that bracketed in (84a) below arises as a blend of the preposition pied-piping structure in (84b) and the preposition stranding structure in (84c): (84)
a. They felt a person with a college education can handle more easily the problems that arise in the type of work [in which you are involved in] (= 2a) b. [in which you are involved] c. [which you are involved in]
Accordingly, the periphery of the preposition doubling structure in (84a) contains the same string in which as occurs in (84b), and the VP at the end of the clause in (84a) contains the same string involved in as occurs in (84c). Although Riley and Parker do not note this, an interesting prediction of the blend analysis of preposition doubling is that only prepositions which allow both pied-piping and stranding will give rise to preposition doubling (iii) He’ll show everyone that what he’s learned as captain (Dean Wilson, Talksport Radio) (iv) They have not withstood up to the pressure (Graeme Souness, Sky Sports TV) (v) He’s well thought highly of (Phil Babb, Sky Sports TV)
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structures – a claim which holds true of all the examples of preposition doubling that I have come across. Furthermore, if the blend analysis is generalised to other languages, an interesting typological prediction that it makes is that only languages which allow both preposition stranding and preposition pied-piping in a given type of structure will allow preposition doubling. In this connection, it is interesting to note that preposition doubling has been reported in other Germanic and Scandinavian language varieties, including North Saxon (Fleischer 2002), Swiss German (Glaser & Frey 2007), Alemannic (Brandner 2008), Flemish (Aelbrecht & den Dikken 2011, 2013), Icelandic (Jónsson 2008), Norwegian and Swedish (Barbiers 2008) – and in all these cases the relevant languages/varieties allow both pied-piping and stranding of prepositions. Interestingly, Jónsson (2008: 404) reports that preposition doubling is possible in wh-questions but not relative clauses in Icelandic, and that preposition pied-piping is likewise possible in questions but not relatives (with preposition stranding being possible in both). Moreover, the blend analysis can be extended to cases of preposition mismatching. This holds not only for use of intrusive of as we earlier saw in relation to (81) above, but also for interchangeable preposition structures like those in (72, 73) above. Under the blend analysis, the bracketed relative clause in a sentence like (85a) below would arise as a blend between (85b) and (85c): (85)
a. There are issues [on which you agree with the Labour Party leader over] (=72a) b. [on which you agree with the Labour Party leader] c. [which you agree with the Labour Party leader over]
Thus, the relative clause bracketed in (85a) begins with the same pied-piped preposition on as occurs in (85b), and ends with the same stranded preposition over as occurs in (85c). A blend analysis would account for two earlier observations about doubled and mismatched preposition structures. Firstly, they are relatively rare: as noted above, preposition doubling occurs in only 1.1% of the preposition relative structures in Hoffmann’s (2011) corpus study of Kenyan English, and preposition mismatches seem to be even rarer (my broadcast English data contain only 25 examples of mismatched prepositions compared to 112 of doubled prepositions). The comparative rarity of such structures is to be expected if they are the result of blends which arise from sporadic processing errors. Secondly, there is no strong length effect in doubled or mismatched preposition structures. As can
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184 Prepositional Relatives be deduced from the tables in (79, 80) above, 69/112 (61.6%) of preposition doubling structures had 4 or fewer words intervening between the two prepositions, and 17/33 (51.5%) of preposition mismatch structures likewise had 4 or fewer words intervening between the mismatched prepositions. If blends involve switching between two alternative target structures, there is no reason to expect them to give rise to a length effect. However, while Riley and Parker (1986: 300) concede that the blend analysis ‘can account for all matched preposition [= preposition doubling: AR] structures and a few extra preposition [= preposition intrusion: AR] structures’, they maintain that ‘Most mismatched preposition structures are not clearly explained by positing blends as their source’ (ibid.). More specifically, they claim that relative clauses like those bracketed below cannot plausibly be treated as blends: (86)
a. America . . . drove the Indians off land [in which was theirs] (Shaughnessy 1977: 65) b. There was a movie [inwhich I saw] [Smith 1981: 310] c. It was a night [inwhich none of us will ever forget] (ibid.) d. . . . my leisure time [inwhich I had plenty of ] (Smith 1981: 311) e. One should be facing the direction [in which he came from] (Smith 1981 311–12] f. One of my fondest memories, [in which I came back to over and over] . . . (Free 1982: 309)
However, these are unusual structures dealt with at length in the two previous sections, where it was argued that such structures (which seem to be found only in written registers) are the result of hypercorrect use of inwhich/in which to replace the relative complementiser that (on one view, via use of the kind of explicit editing rules which students are taught in composition classes). We can therefore set such examples aside as having an exceptional status – and I note that no examples of inwhich used as a complementiser occurred in my broadcast English data. Nevertheless, as pointed out earlier, my data do contain 14 examples of intrusive of in sentences like those in (59) above. These can be given a relatively straightforward analysis as blends (as in 82 above), with the relative clauses in the (a) examples in (87–91) below being treated as blends of the corresponding (b) and (c) structures: (87)
a. There’s another poll [of which the conservatives will be concerned about] (=59a) b. [of which the conservatives will be aware] c. [which the conservatives will be concerned about]
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(88)
a. That was quite a good achievement, [of which I want to thank my team for] (=59b) b. [of which I want my team to be proud] c. [which I want to thank my team for]
(89)
a. We’ll have a right go at him in the second half, [of which we haven’t got long to wait for] (=59c) b. [of which we haven’t got long to wait for the start] c. [which we haven’t got long to wait for]
(90)
a. These text parodies are something [of which KP has certainly got the hump with] (=59d) b. [of which KP has certainly had his fill] c. [which KP has certainly got the hump with]
(91)
a. The Monaco game [of which I was referring to] is coming up right after this (=59e) b. [of which I made mention] c. [which I was referring to]
In short, cases of preposition doubling and intrusion in my data can potentially be taken to involve sporadic speech errors which arise from blends. A blend analysis would account for the comparative rarity of these structures, and also for the absence of any length effect in them – though it could equally be that some doubling and interchangeable preposition structures with relatively long intervening strings arise through memory lapse. The research outlined in this section raises the possibility that doubled and intrusive prepositions may arise from sporadic speech errors. If so, we should expect structures containing them to be judged as ungrammatical and unacceptable by native speakers. However, Radford, Felser and Boxell (2012) provide experimental evidence that this is not the case for preposition doubling.46 They ran two experiments designed to test the relative grammaticality and acceptability of non-canonical preposition doubling relatives like that in (92a) below compared to that of canonical preposition pied-piping/ stranding relatives like those in (92b/92c):47 (92)
46 47
Games developers have created a world a. in which people truly want to lose themselves in (preposition doubling) b. in which people truly want to lose themselves (preposition pied-piping) c. which people truly want to lose themselves in (preposition stranding)
Our research did not cover intrusive preposition structures. We also tested the acceptability of preposition omission structures, but since the next chapter is devoted to preposition omission, I postpone consideration of those results until then.
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186 Prepositional Relatives Their first experiment involved an offline paper-and-pencil task in which native speakers of English (recruited from University of Essex staff and students aged between 19 and 24) were asked to judge the acceptability of a set of sentences like those in (92) above, along with a set of filler sentences. Participants were asked to read each test sentence carefully and then to judge how well-formed and meaningful they considered them to be, on a scale of 1–10 (with 10 representing the highest degree of acceptability). The mean scores were 8.43 (SD 0.26) for preposition doubling structures like (92a), 8.1 (SD 0.48) for preposition pied-piping structures like (92b), and 6.25 (SD 0.86) for preposition stranding structures like (92c). The difference between the scores for doubling and stranding was statistically significant (as was that between the scores for pied-piping and stranding), but the difference in the scores for doubling and pied-piping was not. Radford, Felser and Boxell also conducted a second experiment (on a different group of University of Essex staff/students aged between 19 and 26) involving a speeded acceptability judgement task in which sentences were presented on a computer screen one word at a time in quick succession, and after reading the final word, participants were asked to judge as quickly as possible whether or not a given string was well-formed and meaningful, by pressing a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ button on a PC game pad. The mean percentage of ‘yes’ responses was 90 (SD 14.6) for preposition doubling, 81.6 (SD 25.4) for preposition pied-piping, and 76.6 (SD 25.4) for preposition stranding, with the differences in scores not being statistically significant. Likewise, there were also no significant differences between the mean response latencies (i.e. the amount of time it took for subjects to respond) for the three types of structure. One interesting finding in Radford, Felser and Boxell’s research is that preposition stranding elicited significantly poorer acceptability scores in the untimed offline (paper-and-pencil task) experiment than pied-piping or stranding, but was judged to be just as acceptable as pied-piping and stranding in the timed online (speeded acceptability judgement) experiment. Radford, Felser and Boxell argue that this difference can be attributed to participants’ untimed judgements being influenced by a prescriptive rule stigmatising preposition stranding, the influence of which was absent or much reduced in timed judgements. This is consistent with research suggesting that timed judgement tasks give participants comparatively little time to reflect consciously on their responses, thereby minimising the possibility of their judgements being influenced by prescriptive norms or stylistic rules (cf. Schütze 1996).
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A no less important finding of Radford, Felser and Boxell’s research is that preposition doubling (although stigmatised by prescriptive grammarians) was consistently judged acceptable by informants, and even received the highest ratings numerically. Radford, Felser and Boxell interpret this as suggesting that doubling structures are associated with underlyingly grammatical representations, and that preposition doubling involves spellout redundancy rather than ungrammaticality.48 The fact that (as noted earlier) preposition doubling is grammaticalised in North Saxon (Fleischer 2002), Swiss German (Glaser & Frey 2007), Alemannic (Brandner 2008), Flemish (Aelbrecht & den Dikken 2011, 2013), Icelandic (Jónsson 2008), and Norwegian and Swedish (Barbiers 2008) lends support to the position that doubling does not involve ungrammaticality. Likewise, the fact that other forms of doubling are attested in a wide range of languages (see a.o. Camacho 2002, Felser 2004, Nunes 2004, Cheng 2007, Barbiers et al. 2008, Boef 2013) again suggests that doubling involves spellout redundancy rather than ungrammaticality. In addition, Radford, Felser and Boxell’s findings suggest that doubling is not restricted to language production but is also judged highly acceptable in comprehension-based tasks. This is consistent with preposition copying creating redundancy rather than resulting from grammatical planning errors during speech production. Radford, Felser and Boxell also argue that doubling is unlikely to be the result of processing pressures on commentators in live broadcasts, since doubling was considered highly acceptable in Radford, Felser and Boxell’s untimed judgement experiment where there were no such pressures.49 48
49
There are other factors which may have increased the acceptability of doubling structures. One is the fact that there was a relatively long string of between six and nine words between the two prepositions in Radford, Felser and Boxell’s test sentences: recall that Staum Casasanto and Sag (2008b) found that double-that sentences were judged relatively acceptable when there were seven words between the two complementisers. Another is that preposition doubling facilitates parsing, since in a structure like the world in which we live in the fronted copy of in allows which to be locally identified as the complement of the preposition, and the in situ copy of in allows the in-phrase to be locally identified as the complement of live. In addition, spelling out the initial copy of a moved preposition means that it is easier to process prepositions which ‘are highly dependent on verbs for their interpretation and processing’ (Hawkins 1999: 260, fn. 15). Van Gysel (2015) reports somewhat different results in his undergraduate dissertation, based on an email survey of 20 native speakers of English, designed to test the relative acceptability of doubling, pied-piping and stranding prepositions in a variety of types of wh-clause. However, given that he does not list his test sentences (e.g. we don’t know how many words intervened between the two occurrences of each preposition in doubling structures, or what the exact range of structures tested was), that his study is essentially limited to the prepositions about and with, and that he doesn’t give details of the age and
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188 Prepositional Relatives To summarise: in this section, I have considered whether doubled and intrusive prepositions could be sporadic speech errors. I began by considering the possibility that both may arise as a result of a memory loss, whereby speakers sometimes forget whether or not they have fronted a preposition (and even which preposition they were using), and so spell out another copy of the preposition (or an equivalent preposition) in situ. I noted that the memory lapse account would lead us to expect to find a length effect, with prepositions being more likely to be doubled the longer the string of words intervening between them. However, neither Nykiel’s (2010) data on earlier varieties of English nor my own data from contemporary broadcast English show any clear evidence of a length effect (but see the note of caution in fn. 42). I also noted that the memory lapse hypothesis would not provide any straightforward account of the use of intrusive of in structures like ‘four added minutes, of which we are almost half way through’. I argued that these could more plausibly be treated as cases of blends, in which two different target structures (one with preposition pied-piping, another with preposition stranding) are combined to form a hybrid structure which involves both pied-piping and stranding. I showed how such an analysis could handle both doubled and intrusive prepositions. However, I went on to outline research by Radford, Felser and Boxell arguing that preposition doubling involves redundant spellout rather than ungrammaticality, and I noted that this hypothesis gains support from the observation that there are languages and language varieties in which preposition doubling is grammaticalised. Conversely, the fact that preposition mismatch structures are not grammaticalised in any language or variety that I know of (and occur far less frequently than preposition doubling50) suggests that they are most plausibly dealt with as sporadic processing errors – perhaps resulting from a blend or memory lapse. 3.7
Summary
This chapter began in §3.1 with an illustration of the use of doubled and intrusive prepositions reported in earlier research. In §3.2, I explored the possibility that preposition doubling in relative clauses involves a copying
50
educational backgrounds of his subjects or the precise wording of the instructions given to them, I would not wish to speculate on his results here – though he himself offers some thoughts on ways in which his results diverge from Radford, Felser and Boxell’s (van Gysel 2015: 38–9). As noted earlier, my data contain 33 preposition mismatch structures, but 112 doubled preposition structures.
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3.7 Summary
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operation under which a PP comprising a preposition and a relative pronoun complement undergoes Wh-Movement, and both the highest and lowest copies of the preposition are spelled out. However, I noted that such an account fails to provide a principled answer to the question of why the lowest copy of the preposition should be pronounced, when only the highest copies of other moved constituents are generally spelled out. In §3.3, I went on to outline an alternative account of doubling under which prepositional phrases are taken to comprise a PP projection headed by a lexical preposition contained within a functional pP shell headed by an abstract light preposition which attracts the lexical preposition to adjoin to it, and prepositional doubling arises when PP is split from pP and both the copy of the preposition heading pP and that heading PP are spelled out overtly, by virtue of being the highest copies of the preposition in its immediate domain. However, I noted that the splitting account of preposition doubling leaves a number of questions of implementation in its wake, e.g. about the mechanism triggering pied-piping, and why doubling is optional for speakers who use it, and why it is sporadic in English. In §3.4 I went on to outline Riley and Parker’s attempt to develop a unitary casemarking analysis of preposition doubling and intrusion, under which a relative pronoun like which fails to be assigned case in its initial position, and a preposition is inserted in the syntax in front of which after it has moved in order to assign case to which (either a copy of the preposition whose complement is being relativised, or an intrusive dummy preposition like in). I argued that this analysis is untenable for both theoretical and empirical reasons, that preposition doubling involves spelling out the highest and lowest copies of a fronted preposition, and that intrusive in-relatives may well involve reanalysis of inwhich as a relative complementiser. In §3.5, I discussed the alternative possibility that doubled and intrusive prepositions may arise as a result of hypercorrection. On one view, it involves a form of code-mixing in which a high-style structure is mixed with a neutral-style structure, but I noted that a code-mixing analysis is problematic in the light of claims made by Emonds (1986) and Lasnik and Sobin (2000) that prescriptive rules are unnatural, extragrammatical, and viral. I outlined an alternative hypercorrection analysis on which preposition doubling and intrusion arise through explicit extragrammatical monitoring/editing rules applied to the output of native grammars; but I noted that while such an account is plausible for written forms of output (e.g. student assignments which may be graded in part on their written style), it is far less plausible for spontaneous speech output (especially when, as in the case of my broadcast English data, the output is produced in a situation where commentators are under time pressure to describe the action
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190 Prepositional Relatives in fast-moving games, and are more focused on action than on syntax). In §3.6, I asked whether doubled and intrusive prepositions could be speech errors. I began by considering the possibility that both might arise as a result of a memory loss (whereby speakers sometimes forget whether or not they have fronted a preposition and so spell out another preposition in situ). However, I argued against this on the grounds that there was no clear evidence of the expected length effect, and such an analysis could not account for mismatched preposition structures involving non-equivalent prepositions (e.g. the use of intrusive of in structures like ‘four added minutes, of which we are almost half way through’). I maintained that it was more plausible to treat these as blends, and noted that a blend analysis could potentially handle both doubled and intrusive prepositions. I then went on to outline research by Radford, Felser and Boxell arguing that preposition doubling involves redundant spellout rather than ungrammaticality – a hypothesis that gains support from the observation that there are languages/varieties in which preposition doubling is grammaticalised. On the other hand, the fact that preposition mismatch structures are not grammaticalised in any known language/variety (and occur far less frequently in my data than preposition doubling) suggests that they are most plausibly dealt with as sporadic processing errors.
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4 Gapless Relatives
4.1
Introduction
Colloquial English has gapless relative clause structures like those bracketed below, which have been discussed in a number of works dating back to the 1970s:1 (1)
a. The main target was to finish ahead of Ferrari, [which we’ve extended our lead by 4 points] (Christian Horner, BBC Radio 5) b. It’s a chance for him to look at one or two others, [who there’s always someone who comes from nowhere] (Matt Holland, Talksport Radio) c. The same can’t be said for Kittel, [who it was a bit messy in the final sprint] (Daniel Lloyd, Eurosport TV) d. He’s a fabulous player [who, given the right conditions and the right management, we could be talking about one of the best players in the world] (Sid Lowe, Talksport Radio) e. It’s a decision [that I know where they were coming from] (Paul Nixon, BBC Radio 5)
Such structures are termed ‘gapless’ because (unlike canonical relative clauses in English) they appear not to involve any filler–gap dependency. So, for example, in (1b) there appears to be no subject, object or adjunct gap in the relative clause which could have arisen by moving who out of the gap to the front of the relative clause. In this chapter, I take a critical look at a range of different analyses of gapless relatives, comparing syntactic and processing accounts. I begin in §4.2 by exploring a number of syntactic accounts which suppose that (contrary to the claim that they are gapless), such structures involve 1
See a.o. Block (1975), Gordon & Patterson (1979), Ihalainen (1980), Kjellmer (1988, 2010), Miller (1988, 1993), Kuha (1994), Miller & Weinert (1998), Herrmann (2003), Hoffmann (2005, 2011), Loock (2005, 2007b, 2010), Radford (2010a, 2010b, 2018), Radford & Felser (2011), Radford, Felser & Boxell (2012), Kortmann & Lunkenheimer (2013), Collins & Radford (2015) and Burke (2017).
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192 Gapless Relatives relativisation of the object of a stranded preposition which is present in the syntax but receives a silent spellout at PF; e.g. on this view, which in (1a) could be analysed as the complement of a silent counterpart of the preposition over. In §4.3, I go on to consider an alternative silent preposition analysis proposed by Collins & Radford (2015) in which gapless relatives involve deletion of a fronted preposition. In §4.4, I consider a range of alternative analyses which posit that there is no silent preposition in (many) gapless relatives. In §4.5 I look at alternative processing accounts, and in §4.6 I present a summary of my overall findings. 4.2
Stranded Preposition Analyses
One possibility to be explored in this section and the next two is that gapless relatives represent a specific type of syntactic structure characteristic of colloquial English. However, from this perspective they are potentially anomalous in that (superficially, at least) they appear not to involve the kind of filler–gap dependency found in other types of relative clause. Given that gapless relatives can often be paraphrased by prepositional relatives, one way of attempting to reconcile them with canonical relatives is to suppose that (contrary to what might seem to be the case at first sight), gapless relatives involve an overt or null relative wh-pronoun which serves as the complement of a stranded preposition which is given a silent spellout: for obvious reasons, I’ll refer to this as the silent stranded preposition/SSP analysis. Such an analysis would allow (supposedly) gapless relatives to be treated as involving the same filler–gap dependency as canonical relatives. An SSP analysis has been proposed by a variety of researchers for relative clauses like those bracketed below (where the preposition which is enclosed within angle brackets is taken to be present in the syntax but silent/unpronounced in the phonology): (2)
a. The Senate’s the forum [that he should make his case ] (Block 1975: 10) b. I can’t think of any goal that Rangers scored [that you could blame Laroque ] (Gordon & Patterson 1979: 14) c. Of course there’s a rope [that you can pull the seat back up ] (Miller 1993: 112) d. When I went over there, they were clowning around, [which I didn’t really care until I found out they had lost my file] (Kuha 1994: 1) e. So we were really answerable to the Ipswich Borough Council, rather than to private enterprise [which some people really wanted to sell us off ] . . . (Herrmann 2003: 170)
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f. Well, this is an area [which for quite some time I’ve . . . I’ve featured on the forefront ], violence against women (Hoffmann 2011: 113) g. It’s a fun exercise, rather than something [that Messrs Miller and Flower will have any input ] (Jonathan Agnew, BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra; Radford, Felser & Boxell 2012: 404) h. . . . like a big yard [that you do gardening an’all ] (Kortmann & Lunkenheimer 2013: feature 198) i. . . . there was no original chicken (aw) [which she wanted 21 pieces ] (Burke 2017: 366)
Gordon & Patterson (1979) characterise this type of structure as involving ‘prepositional loss’, Miller (1993: 112) ‘preposition omission’, Herrmann (2003: 170–1) ‘preposition elision’, Hoffmann (2011: 115) ‘missing prepositions’, Radford, Felser & Boxell (2012: 404) ‘preposition pruning’, and Kortmann & Lunkenheimer (2013)/Burke (2017: 364) ‘preposition chopping’. This phenomenon is reported to occur in World Englishes (Newbrook 1998: 48–9), and is also recorded in The Electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English (Kortmann and Lunkenheimer 2013, feature 198). A syntactic analysis seems potentially plausible in principle, given the frequency of occurrence of such structures in my data (which contain 218 examples of gapless relatives that could potentially be analysed as involving relativisation of the complement of a missing preposition). Evidence for positing a null preposition in structures like (2) comes from the observation that non-wh counterparts of the relativised constituent require an (italicised) preposition to introduce them, as we see from the examples below: (3)
a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i.
He should make his case *(in) the Senate You couldn’t blame Laroque *(for) that goal You can pull the seat back up *(with) a rope I didn’t really care *(about) them clowning around Some people really wanted to sell us off *(to) private enterprise For quite some time, I’ve featured on the forefront *(of) this area Messrs Miller and Flower will not have any input *(into) this You do gardenin’ and all *(in) the yard She wanted 21 pieces *(of ) the original chicken
The obligatory nature of the preposition in such cases makes it plausible to suppose that the corresponding sentences in (2) involve relativisation of the complement of a silent preposition. Furthermore, the silent preposition analysis gains further plausibility from the observation that there are contexts in standard varieties/registers of English which allow prepositions to have a silent spellout in relative clauses. One such involves (what are traditionally classified as) adverbial relatives like those bracketed below:
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194 Gapless Relatives (4)
a. b. c. d.
I don’t like the way [(that) he drives] The day [(that) we arrived], it was raining Do you remember the place [(that) we first met]? That was the reason [(that) I fell in love with you]
Ross (1967: 93) argues that the relative clauses in such sentences contain a null preposition with a null relative wh-phrase as its complement, so that the relative nominal in (4a) has an underlying structure paraphrasable as ‘the way (that) he drives IN WHICH WAY’, with the capitalised constituents being present in the syntax but given a null spellout in the phonology. In a similar way, the relative clauses in (4b/4c/4d) could be argued to contain abstract PPs such as ON WHICH DAY/IN WHICH PLACE/FOR WHICH REASON respectively. If so, adverbial relatives like those in (4) involve relativisation of the complement of a null preposition.2 A second class of structures in which prepositions can receive a null spellout in standard registers/varieties involves certain types of ellipsis structure in which an (italicised) preposition can be omitted if it has a matching (boldprinted) antecedent in an earlier clause – as in examples like those below: (5)
a. What’s this cake filled with? − (With) whipped cream b. I heard it from someone, but I can’t remember (from) who c. I think it’s using cloak and dagger techniques in a field [that they don’t belong (in)] (adapted from Gordon & Patterson 1979: 16)
In each case, the italicised preposition can optionally be given a null spellout because its contents are recoverable from its bold-printed antecedent.3 In this chapter, I will not be concerned with canonical adverbial or elliptical relatives like those in (4) and (5). Instead, my focus will be on non-canonical gapless relative clauses like those in (2) above that occur in contexts in which the use of a null preposition would 2
3
Such an analysis is consistent with the analysis of adverbial nouns (and pronouns) as PPs headed by a null preposition, on which see Emonds (1976, 1987), McCawley (1988), Collins (2007), Caponigro & Pearl (2008, 2009), and Radford (2016: 231–3). (5a) involves Bare Argument Ellipsis: see Merchant (2001, 2004b), and Merchant et al. (2013). (5b) involves a type of ellipsis known as Sluicing: see Ross (1969), Merchant (1999, 2001), van Craenenbroeck (2004, 2010), Almeida & Yoshida (2007), Fortin (2007), Szczegielniak (2008, 2015), Stjepanović (2008, 2012), Rodrigues, Nevins & Vicente (2009), Chung, Ladusaw & McCloskey (2011), Sag & Nykiel (2011), Sato (2011), Wei (2011), Lasnik (2013), Nykiel (2013, 2017), Leung (2014), Philippova (2014), and Dadan (2015). I set aside here potentially distinct preposition omission phenomena, such as omission of prepositions in telegraphic speech in phrases like ‘Detained JFK Airport New York’ (Barton 1998), or in L1 grammars (Nicholas 2011) or L2 grammars (Klein 1993a, 1993b, 1995, 2001; Jourdain 1996; Dekydtspotter, Sprouse & Anderson 1998; Klein & Casco 1999; Hokari & Wakabayashi 2009).
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not be licensed in standard varieties/registers, raising the question of what licenses P-drop in such structures. Block (1975) offers the following answer: It is pretty clear why prepositions are being omitted: given the old-fashioned edict that one should never permit them to dangle at the end of a sentence, there remains the puzzling decision as to where to put them. Leaving the preposition out altogether eliminates the problem (Block 1975: 10)
If we translate this into more contemporary terms, it amounts to the claim that omission of the preposition serves a repair function, in that it repairs structures which would otherwise lead to a constraint violation.4 One implementation of this idea (transposing it into the framework used here) is to suppose that the bracketed relative clause in a sentence like (6a) below has the syntactic structure shown in (6b), in which movement of a null relative wh-pronoun (WH) strands the preposition in at the end of the sentence: (6)
a. The Senate’s the forum [that he should make his case ] (=2a) b. [RELP WH [REL that] he should make his case in —]
Subsequently, the stranded preposition undergoes a P-drop operation at PF which (under a more recent implementation of Block’s analysis) is motivated by the need to avoid a PF filter/constraint/interface condition to effect that a transitive preposition requires an immediately following overt complement at PF. However, Gordon & Patterson (1979) argue against Block’s repair account on the grounds that P-stranding is frequent in both spoken and written English, and most speakers/writers alternate between P-pied-piping and P-stranding structures. They illustrate this claim by a set of examples from a journal article, including the following (cited in Gordon & Patterson 1979: 2): (7)
4
a. There exists, moreover, a fundamental tendency of organisms to take in substances and stimulations [ for which there already exist appropriate internal structures and organization] (Tuttenham 1966: 213) b. They hope thus possibly to accelerate a child’s progress – a goal [which Piaget has reservations about] (Tuttenham 1966: 216)
On the claim that certain kinds of ellipsis operation can repair constraint violations, see a.o. Ross (1969), Chomsky (1972), Lasnik (1995, 2001), Kennedy & Merchant (2000), Johnson (2001), Merchant (2001, 2004b, 2006, 2008), Fox & Lasnik (2003), Hornstein, Lasnik, & Uriagereka (2003), van Craenenbroeck (2004, 2010), Park (2005), Boeckx & Lasnik (2006), van Craenenbroeck & den Dikken (2006), Nakao (2009), Bošković (2011), and Radford & Iwasaki (2015).
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196 Gapless Relatives The fact that speakers frequently use P-stranding structures like (7b) alongside P-pied-piping structures like (7a), they maintain, argues against there being a constraint against P-stranding, and this makes it implausible to treat P-drop as a mechanism designed to repair (supposedly illicit) P-stranding structures. Indeed, the repair account is weakened still further by evidence from corpus-based studies that P-stranding is the norm in colloquial English: for example, Gries (2002) reports 100% use of preposition stranding in samples of spoken English from the British National Corpus,5 and Herrmann (2003: 124) reports 93.5% use of preposition stranding for relativisation of a prepositional object in (oral interview data from) the Freiburg Corpus of English Dialects. In a similar vein, a study by McDaniel, McKee & Bernstein (1998) of the relative clause production of 115 American children aged 3–11 years showed that (on an elicitation task), the children only produced preposition-stranding structures, raising the possibility that piedpiping is acquired via a prescriptive rule (such as ‘Never end a clause with a preposition’) learned through formal education.6 But if P-drop does not serve to obviate stranding, how does it come about? One possibility is that relevant speakers allow any preposition to be given a null spellout (in principle, at least), subject to satisfaction of the following constraint (dating back in spirit to Chomsky 1964): (8)
Recoverability Condition A constituent can only have a null spellout if its content is recoverable
We might then suppose that in the case of a relative clause like that bracketed below (repeated from 2b above): (9)
I can’t think of any goal that Rangers scored [that you could blame Laroque ]
the preposition for can be deleted because its contents are recoverable from the selectional properties of the matrix verb, since blame selects a for-complement (as in ‘blame someone for something’). However, more careful reflection suggests that the recoverability analysis is untenable. This is because it fails to account for why for is omissible in
5
6
But see Hoffmann (2011: 94–6) for doubts about the robustness and methodology of the Gries study. However, a complication that should be noted is that a number of corpus studies report that piedpiping is favoured with wh-relativisers, even in spoken English. For example, Quirk (1957) reports 86% use of pied-piping with wh-relativisers in spoken English.
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a relative clause like that bracketed in (9) above, but not in other types of clause – e.g. not in an independent sentence such as: (10)
You couldn’t blame Laroque *(for) any goal that Rangers scored
This is all the more puzzling because so-called adverbial nouns typically allow their governing preposition to be null in relative and non-relative clauses alike, as we see from the example below: (11)
He was born (on) the same day [that I was born (on)]
In short, the recoverability analysis seems no less problematic than the repair analysis. An alternative variant of the silent stranded preposition analysis is outlined (but ultimately rejected) by Collins and Radford (2015: 9–14). This is an extension of an analysis proposed by Caponigro and Pearl (2008, 2010) under which a free relative clause like that bracketed in (12a) below is taken to have the structure in (12b): (12)
a. Lily adores [where this tree grows] b. [CP where [C ø] this tree grows [PP [P ø] ]]
Under the analysis in (12b), where is the superficial spellout of a DP with the structure WHICH PLACE and originates as the complement of a null preposition ø and then moves to the edge of CP, leaving the null preposition stranded. Collins and Radford consider the possibility that Caponigro and Pearl’s analysis of free relatives like (12) could be extended to gapless relatives, so that a gapless relative clause like that bracketed in (13a) below would have the structure in (13b): (13)
a. When I went over there, they were clowning around, [which I didn’t really care until I found out they had lost my file] (Kuha 1994: 1) b. [CP which [C ø] I didn’t really care [PP [P ø] ] until I found out . . .]
Under the analysis in (13b), which originates as the complement of a null preposition that is interpreted as a silent counterpart of about. However, Collins and Radford argue that the stranded null preposition analysis in (12b) is problematic in certain respects. One problem they highlight concerns the interpretation of the null preposition. In standard English ‘silent preposition’ structures like the following: (14)
a. Let’s go and eat [PP [P ø] someplace else] b. I did it [PP [P ø] my way] c. Let’s meet up [PP [P ø] some other time]
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198 Gapless Relatives the silent preposition has an interpretation which matches that of its complement, so the null preposition has a locative interpretation in (14a) which can be inferred from its locative complement (someplace else), a manner interpretation in (14b) which can be inferred from its manner complement (my way), and a temporal interpretation in (14c) which can be inferred from its temporal complement (some other time). However (Collins and Radford observe), no such matching effect holds between the preposition and its complement in a gapless relative clause like that in (13a): e.g. which has no specific interpretive properties that would allow the null preposition in (13b) to be interpreted as a null counterpart of about.7 Given that a wide range of prepositions can be silent in gapless relatives, an analysis like (13) would seemingly require us to suppose that the missing preposition has a potentially unrestricted interpretation which cannot be inferred from the relative pronoun and which has instead to be inferred from syntactic, semantic and pragmatic clues: this would create a clear asymmetry with the silent preposition structures posited for adverbial noun structures like (14), and free relatives like (12). A second problem which Collins and Radford identify with the silent preposition analysis is distributional in nature. Silent prepositions in adverbial structures in standard varieties/registers typically occur in both relative clauses (like those in 4 above) and non-relative clauses (like those in 14 above). By contrast (Collins and Radford claim), the noncanonical use of silent prepositions is found only in gapless relatives like those in (2) above, and this distributional asymmetry cannot be accounted for in any principled way by a silent stranded preposition analysis like that in (13b). The three different variants of the silent preposition analysis outlined in this section have in common that they hypothesise that gapless relatives involve relativisation of the complement of a silent stranded preposition/SSP. However, Gordon and Patterson (1979) argue that this assumption is undermined by the observation that the silent preposition is sometimes one which undergoes obligatory pied-piping. They give the example in (15) below, where the standard English counterpart of which in (15a) is a structure like (15b) containing a pied-piped preposition, not a structure like (15c) containing a stranded preposition: 7
It might seem that the interpretation of the preposition is recoverable from the selectional properties of care, since care selects an about-complement (as in ‘I don’t care about it’). Note, however, that any such assumption would pose the kind of problem discussed in relation to (10).
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a. We have a procedure under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment [which he can give up his office temporarily] (William Proxmire, CBS Radio) b. . . . a procedure [by which he can give up his office temporarily] c. . . . *a procedure [which he can give up his office temporarily by]
My own data contain a number of similar examples of structures like those in (16–21) below in which a (bracketed) gapless relative clause has a standard English counterpart involving a pied-piped rather than a stranded preposition: (16)
a. If we don’t get rain in the next week, then water levels will have reached the point [that we will need to impose a hose-pipe ban] (Water company spokesman, BBC Radio 5) b. . . . the point [at which we will need to impose a hose-pipe ban] c. . . . *the point [which we will need to impose a hose-pipe ban at]
(17)
a. Players need to play on a level [which you know what you’re going to get out of them] (Ray Parlour, Talksport Radio) b. . . . [at which you know what you are going to get out of them] c. . . . *[which you know what you’re going to get out of them at]
(18)
a. There’s always the Landon Donovan approach, [which Landon Donovan said: ‘You know what, I make plenty of money, I’m happier playing for Major League Soccer’] (Gary Richardson, BBC Radio 5) b. . . . [in which Landon Donovan said ‘You know what . . . ’] c. . . . *[which Landon Donovan said in ‘You know what . . . ’]
(19)
a. Manchester United have got a good goalkeeper, [which Torres could’ve had a goal] (Peter Allen, BBC Radio 5) b. . . . [without which Torres could’ve had a goal] c. . . . *[which Torres could’ve had a goal without]
(20)
a. He cut down his run-up recently, [which he still seems to bowl at a good pace] (Mark Ramprakash, Talksport Radio) b. . . . [despite which he still seems to bowl at a good pace] c. . . . *[which he still seems to bowl at a good pace despite]
(21)
a. We didn’t get the standards physically, [which obviously we’ve lost the game] (Steve Bruce, BBC Radio 5) b. . . . [because of which obviously we’ve lost the game] c. . . . *[which obviously we’ve lost the game because of ]
The observation that each of the gapless relatives in the (a) examples has a standard English counterpart with a pied-piped preposition (and not with a stranded preposition) undermines the assumption that prepositions whose complements are relativised can only be silent when stranded.
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200 Gapless Relatives Having examined (and argued against) the possibility that gapless relatives involve relativisation of the object of a silent stranded preposition, in the next section I turn to look at a different type of silent preposition analysis proposed by Collins and Radford, under which gapless relatives involve relativisation of the complement of a fronted preposition which is given a silent spellout at PF by a deletion operation termed Ghosting. 4.3
A Fronted Preposition Analysis
Collins and Radford (2015) propose an alternative silent preposition analysis of gapless relatives under which the relativised constituent is taken to be the complement of a fronted preposition which has a silent spellout, rather than of a stranded preposition. How their analysis works can be illustrated in relation to an earlier example repeated as (22) below: (22)
When I went over there, they were clowning around, [which I didn’t really care until I found out they had lost my file] (=2d)
Collins and Radford posit that the relative pronoun which in such cases originates as the complement of the preposition about. Following van Riemsdijk (1978), they posit that which moves from complement to specifier position within the PP headed by about by an operation which they term Preposition Inversion, so deriving the structure below:8 (23)
[PP which [P about] ]
Subsequently, either which can undergo Wh-Movement on its own to the edge of the relative clause CP, or the whole PP containing both which and at can move. Movement of which on its own will derive the structure in (24) below, if (as Collins and Radford suppose) C in finite clauses is canonically spelled out as that: (24)
[CP which [C that] I didn’t really care [PP [P about] ] until . . .]
However, a structure like (24) violates a generalised version of the Doubly Filled COMP Filter proposed by Koopman (2000) and Koopman & Szabolsci (2000), which is characterised in the following terms by Collins and Radford (2015: 16), where phases are taken to include CP, vP, DP and PP: 8
Collins & Radford adopt the traditional single-projection analysis of PPs, not the split projection analysis outlined in §3.3.
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Edge Constraint The head and specifier of a phase cannot both be spelled out overtly at PF
Given that CP is a phase, a structure like (24) will violate the Edge Constraint (25) by virtue of containing a CP which has both an overt head (that) and an overt specifier (which). But Collins and Radford argue that the structure in (25) can be rescued by a Complementiser Deletion operation which gives a null spellout to the complementiser that, so mapping (24) above into (26) below: (26)
[CP which [C ] I didn’t really care [PP [P about] ] until . . .]
Since the only overt constituent on the edge of CP is which, the resulting structure (26) incurs no violation of the Edge Constraint (25) and so is grammatical. As noted above, an alternative possibility is for the whole PP in (23) to undergo Wh-Movement, so deriving the structure below: (27)
[CP [PP which [P about] ] [C that] I didn’t really care until . . .]
There is a double violation of the Edge Constraint in (27), since both CP and the fronted PP have an overt head and an overt specifier. However, this double violation can be rescued by giving a silent spellout to the complementiser that by Complementiser Deletion, and also giving a silent spellout to the preposition about by an operation which they characterize in the following terms (where ghosting is a type of deletion operation which differs from ellipsis in not involving deletion under identity with an antecedent): (28)
Preposition Ghosting At PF, ghost an overt preposition with an overt specifier
Application of Complementiser Deletion and Preposition Ghosting will map the structure in (27) above to that in (29) below: (29)
[CP [PP which [P ] ] [C ] I didn’t really care until . . .]
The resulting structure (29) no longer violates the Edge Constraint (25), since the fronted PP has an overt specifier which with a null head, and the relative clause CP likewise has an overt specifier (a PP containing which) with a null head. Having looked at how Collins and Radford deal with gapless wh-relatives containing a wh-pronoun like which, let’s now look at how they deal with gapless wh-less relatives like that bracketed as follows:
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202 Gapless Relatives (30)
It’s one of those grounds [that the crowd are still close to you] (Gareth Southgate, ITV)
They hypothesise that the relative clause here contains the relative pronoun which, and that this serves as the complement of the preposition in. The relative pronoun raises from being the complement to becoming the specifier of in by Preposition Inversion, and then the whole PP undergoes Wh-Movement to the edge of a CP headed by the complementiser that, so deriving the relative clause structure below: (31)
[CP [PP which [P in] ] [C that] the crowd are still close to you ]
However, the fronted PP in (31) violates the Edge Constraint since it has both an overt head (in) and an overt specifier (which). Ghosting the preposition in will give rise to the structure below, where there is only one overt constituent on the edge of PP (which) and consequently PP no longer violates the constraint: (32)
[CP [PP which ] [C that] the crowd are still close to you ]
But although the PP phase in (32) no longer violates the Edge Constraint, the CP phase still does because it has an overt head that and a specifier which is overt by virtue of containing which. One way in which this problem can be overcome is by giving a silent spellout to the complementiser that, as in (29) above. Another way is to delete the relative pronoun which by an operation which (slightly adapting the formuation of Radford 2009a: 235) can be characterised as follows (where a relative pronoun is orphaned in spec-C if it is the sole overt constituent of the specifier of C):9 (33)
Wh-Deletion A relative pronoun orphaned in spec-C is given a null spellout in the PF component – optionally in a finite clause, obligatorily in an infinitival clause
Since which is orphaned in (32) by virtue of being the sole overt constituent of the PP specifier of the complementiser that, it can undergo Wh˗Deletion, thereby deriving the following PF structure: (34)
[CP [PP ] [C that] the crowd are still close to you ]
Because the only overt constituent on the edge of CP is the complementiser that (and because PP contains no overt constituent), there is no violation of the Edge Constraint. Consequently, the structure in (34) is grammatical and 9
Although the formulation in (33) was devised for restrictive relatives, it is intended also to apply to kind relatives (though these are not considered by Collins and Radford).
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is spelled out as in (30) above: ‘It’s one of those grounds [that the crowd are still close to you].’ A parallel derivation can be proposed for gapless zero-relatives if we suppose that they involve the additional application of Complementiser Deletion, so resulting in the type of gapless relative clause (bracketed below) which we find in sentences such as: (35)
It’s one of those games [the Scotland players will raise their game] (John Collins, BBC Radio 5)
On Collins and Radford’s assumptions, the relative clause in (35) involves moving which to the front of a PP headed by in, wh-moving this PP to the front of a relative CP headed by that, and then deleting which, in and that in order to avoid violation of the Edge Constraint. Collins and Radford claim that Preposition Ghosting is found only in relative clauses, and is restricted to colloquial/informal registers of English, and they offer the following explanation as to why. They claim that although any kind of constituent can transit through spec-PP and thereafter move to a criterial position elsewhere, only a caseless ‘light’ constituent (i.e. a constituent with little semantic or grammatical content) can move to and remain in spec-PP.10 They hypothesise that relative pronouns like which/who have developed non-canonical caseless variants in colloquial English through the attrition of case endings on relative pronouns in spoken English, with the archaic accusative form whom being defunct and whose relatives being supplanted by resumptive who-relatives like ‘someone who I don’t like his attitude’ (as we saw in Chapter 2). They argue that these caseless relative pronouns in colloquial English obligatorily move to spec-PP in order to avoid violating a constraint which they formulate as follows (Collins & Radford 2015: 22): (36)
10
Case Constraint A caseless constituent cannot occur in a case position (in the local c-command domain of a case assigner)
For example, a nominal like someplace in a sentence like ‘He must have hidden it someplace’ moves from being the complement to becoming the specifier of the preposition in, so deriving: (i) [PP someplace [P in] ] Someplace is (by hypothesis) caseless and incorporates the light noun PLACE, and has to move to spec-CP in order to avoid violating the Case Constraint (36). The preposition in here undergoes by Preposition Ghosting (28), thereby avoiding violation of the Edge Constraint (25).
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204 Gapless Relatives Thereafter the caseless relative pronoun can remain in spec-PP without violating the Case Constraint. If the overall PP subsequently undergoes Wh-Movement, then in order to avoid violation of the Edge Constraint, the preposition will have to undergo Ghosting (as illustrated earlier). By contrast, in canonical relatives, pronouns like who/which in prepositional relatives are always assigned case by their governing preposition, and are either extracted out of PP by Wh-Movement (transiting through the edge of PP because PP is a phase), or remain in situ and are pied-piped along with the relative pronoun. Thus, canonical relatives contain case-marked relative pronouns and give rise to preposition stranding or pied-piping, whereas non-canonical relatives contain caseless ‘light’ relative pronouns which give rise to preposition ghosting (thereby creating gapless relatives). On the face of things, Collins and Radford’s analysis would appear to be a principled account in the sense that it reduces the difference between the filler–gap relatives and gapless relatives with silent prepositions to principles of Case Theory. However, as we will see in the rest of this section, their analysis is potentially problematic in numerous respects. For one thing, it makes use of an extremely powerful (and in certain respects ad hoc) descriptive apparatus which could be argued to be incompatible with the goal of developing maximally simple grammars which are easily learnable by children. The apparatus invoked by Collins and Radford includes two constraints (the Edge Constraint and the Case Constraint), and (in addition to standard movement operations like Wh-Movement) an additional Preposition Inversion operation which moves the complement of a preposition to become its specifier. In addition, the analysis utilises three distinct types of deletion operation (Ellipsis, Preposition Ghosting and Complementiser Deletion). In this respect, it should be noted that Collins & Postal (2012) argue that we must: distinguish ellipsis (i.e., deletion linked to the need for some type of antecedent) from what we will call ghosting. The latter term will denote the grammatical deletion of elements whose deletion does not depend on the existence of any antecedent phrase. (Collins & Postal 2012: 32)
Collins and Radford also argue that Preposition Ghosting differs from Complementiser Deletion in that the former only applies in structures which would otherwise violate the Edge Constraint, whereas the latter is conditioned by a range of by a range of different factors, as they note in fn. 12 of their paper in the following terms:
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These include syntactic factors (e.g. whether or not the complementiser is immediately adjacent to the head selecting it: Nomura 2006), phonological factors (relating to rhythmic constraints on sequences of stressed and unstressed syllables: Lee & Gibbons 2007) and a range of processing factors, including the length of any material intervening between the main verb and embedded subject (Hawkins 2001), structural priming (Ferreira 2003), and information density (Jaeger 2010).
Furthermore, Collins and Radford (2015: 19) make the following observation about the nature of Wh-Deletion: Wh-Deletion . . . is not an instance of Ghosting, since the restrictive relative pronoun has an antecedent (and we earlier defined Ghosting as deletion in the absence of an antecedent). Nor is it necessarily linked to the Edge Condition, since it is obligatory in relative clauses with a null infinitival complementiser, like that italicised in ‘He’s looking for a place (*which) to hide in’
Thus, their analysis invokes an immensely powerful set of different types of deletion operation which would seem to be potentially unconstrained and subject to ad hoc conditions (e.g. making Wh-Deletion obligatory in infinitives). Indeed, the apparatus they posit is so powerful that in some cases it gives rise to overgeneration. As a case in point, consider a relative clause like that bracketed in (37) below (repeated from above) where an inverted PP has been fronted: (37)
a. It’s one of those grounds [that the crowd are still close to you] (= 30) b. [CP [PP which in ] [C that] the crowd are still close to you ] (=31)
We can avoid a double violation of the Edge Constraint here if Complementiser Deletion applies to delete that, and if Wh-Deletion applies to delete which, thereby deriving the relative clause structure in (38a) below, which is spelled out as the string bracketed in (38b): (38)
a. [CP [PP in ] [C ] the crowd are still close to you ] b. *It’s one of those grounds [in the crowd are still close to you]
However, this gives rise to an ungrammatical outcome in which the preposition in is stranded at the beginning of the relative clause. To block this illicit outcome, Collins and Radford would need to invoke a further piece of ad hoc descriptive apparatus – and it is far from clear how to do this in a principled fashion.
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206 Gapless Relatives A further problem arising from Collins and Radford’s analysis concerns the operation of Preposition Ghosting. The problem can be illustrated in relation to the sentence below: (39)
He fell [PP right/straight [P down] the stairs]
Given the traditional assumption (Radford 1988: 246) that the adverbs right and straight in this kind of use function as prepositional specifiers, then right/ straight will be the specifiers of the preposition down here. But since Collins and Radford’s formulation of Preposition Ghosting given in (28) above specifies: ‘At PF, ghost an overt preposition with an overt specifier’, this (wrongly) predicts that down must be obligatorily deleted in this kind of structure, because it is an overt preposition with an overt specifier. Clearly, however, this is not the case, since deleting down would lead to ungrammaticality (cf. *He fell right/ straight the stairs). Yet another problem posed by Collins and Radford’s analysis concerns the Preposition Inversion operation which takes place in structures like (23) above, repeated as (40) below (with the addition of an arrow to mark movement): (40)
[PP which [P about] ]
The problem is that any such movement operation would fall foul of a constraint which Boeckx (2007: 110) formulates as follows:11 (41)
Antilocality Constraint ‘Movement internal to a projection counts as too local, and is banned’
The antilocality violation arises because in a structure like (40), the arrowed Preposition Inversion operation involves ‘movement internal to a projection’ by virtue of moving which from complement to specifier position within PP.12 A further issue which arises in relation to Collins and Radford’s account concerns the descriptive adequacy of the Edge Constraint (25) which plays such a crucial role in their analysis. Collins and Radford (2015: 31–8) discuss 11
12
See Chapter 3, fn. 17, and see Abels (2003: 12) for a slightly different formulation which likewise bans movement from complement to specifier position internally within the same projection. Note, however, that this problem can be circumvented if we adopt the split projection analysis of PPs outlined in §3.3, under which prepositional phrases comprise a lexical PP contained within a functional pP shell. We could then suppose that Preposition Inversion involves non-local movement of which from the complement position in PP to the specifier position in pP.
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numerous types of clause structure which appear to call into question the robustness of the constraint for English, including interrogative inversion clauses like (42a) below, negative inversion structures like (42b), wh+that exclamatives like (42c), and wh+that interrogatives like (42d):13 (42)
a. [CP How [C could] he have known]? b. [CP Never [C had] he heard anything so silly] c. People can see [CP how successful [C that] they’ve been] (Interviewee, BBC World Service) d. It’s quite clear [CP on which side of the Blair-Brown divide [C that] Alistair Campbell comes down on] (Political correspondent, BBC Radio 5)
Such structures appear to violate the Edge Constraint in that the bracketed CPs have an overt (bold-printed) head with an overt (italicised) specifier. However, Collins and Radford argue that sentences such as (43) below (where an underlined constituent intervenes between the bold-printed auxiliary/complementiser and the italicised constituent which precedes it) provide empirical evidence that the two are contained in separate peripheral projections: (43)
a. Why, in Scotland, do they eat haggis (Hudson 2003) b. I swear that on no account during the holidays will I write a paper (Haegeman 2012) c. Look how close on the corners that Valentino is (Julian Ryder, BT TV) d. Capello has to know who, when the chips are down, that he can trust to do a job for the team (Graham Taylor, BBC Radio 5)
If we adopt a cartographic approach (they argue) the italicised, underlined and bold-printed constituents will be contained in separate peripheral projections, so that (for example) that that-clause in (43b) would have structure along the lines shown in simplified form below: (44)
[FORCEP that [FOCP on no account [MODP during the holidays [FINP will [TP I write a paper]]]]]
Since each of the peripheral constituents in (44) is contained in a separate projection, there is no violation of the Edge Constraint. However, while what Collins and Radford say is tenable for structures like (43a, 43b) involving inverted auxiliaries, I would maintain that it is not tenable for structures in which the complementiser that is preceded by one or more 13
Structures like those in (42) were pointed out to Collins and Radford by Bob Borsley, using the traditional CP analysis of clause structure. Collins & Radford 2015 also addresses potential counterexamples from German, Dutch and Swedish (pointed out by reviewers), but for succinctness I will not discuss these here.
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208 Gapless Relatives other peripheral constituents. This is because Radford (2018: 105–215) argues at considerable length that the complementiser that in structures like (43c, 43d) is licensed via a spec-head relation with the constituent immediately preceding it (and Villa-García 2015 makes a parallel claim about the licensing of non-initial quethat in Spanish). On this view, the complement clause in (43d) will have a peripheral structure which includes the projections shown below (where WHP is an interrogative wh-projection, and MODP is a modifier projection): (45)
[WHP who [WH ø] [MODP when the chips are down [MOD that] he can trust]]
The assumption that the complementiser that is licensed by the modifying adverbial clause when the chips are down and not by the interrogative pronoun who accounts for that being used in a structure like (45), when it would not be acceptable to most speakers in a wh-question without the modifier (cf. ‘He has to know who (*that) he can trust’). If the analysis in (45) is on the right lines, the MODP projection in (45) has both an overt specifier and an overt head and this undermines the putative universality of the Edge Constraint.14 A further aspect of Collins and Radford’s analysis which is problematic is their claim that Preposition Ghosting is restricted to occurring in relative clauses because colloquial English has developed caseless light relative pronouns. However, the empirical robustness of the claim that P-Ghosting only takes place in relative clauses is undermined by wh-questions such as the following, which appear to involve ghosting of the preposition in : (46)
14
a. Who do they need to be wary , though, in terms of the Burnley side? (Presenter, Sky Sports TV) b. What were you most impressed about your side, Karl? (Andy Goldstein, Talksport Radio)
There are a wide range of other structures which (under certain assumptions) could constitute counterexamples to the Edge Constraint, including potential PPs like those bracketed in (i–iii) below, and potential DPs like those bracketed in (iv–vi) below: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi)
They fought in the war, but I can’t remember [PP which side [P for] ] She died [PP three years [P ago] ] Boris claims UK trade will flourish [PP Brexit [P notwithstanding] ] I’ve never seen [DP quite so big [D a] statue] I don’t know [DP who [D ’s] car] it is That fur coat is for sale at [DP twice [D the] price] in Harrods
Clearly, this only holds if the phrases in question have structures along the lines indicated above.
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c. Malcolm, what are you walking like that ? (TV series, Malcolm in the Middle, cited by Berizzi 2010: 129) d. How much would he go in the summer? (Ray Parlour, Talksport Radio) e. What kinda story are we talkin’ ? (Publicity trailer, BBC1 TV) f. What sort of shape is he , going into Wimbledon, then? (Mark Pougatch, BBC Radio 5) g. What sort of period did this abuse take place ? (Rhod Sharp, BBC Radio 5)
Given that who/what/how much are interrogative quantifiers and that who quantifies over humans, what over inanimates, and how much over amounts, and given furthermore that (unlike relative pronouns) they have no antecedent, it could scarcely be claimed that they are ‘light’ pronouns with minimal semantic or grammatical content – and indeed any such claim would be even less plausible in relation to wh-phrases like what kinda story or what sort of shape/period. Furthermore, topic structures like those below could also be argued to involve the ghosting of the angle-bracketed preposition when its (italicised) complement is topicalised: (47)
a. Set pieces, they’ve been vulnerable (Commentator, Sky Sports TV) b. He’s not a great ball striker, but putting, he’s the best (Dean Saunders, Talksport Radio) c. Both teams, there’s gonna be lots of changes (Reporter, BBC Radio 5) d. The seamers, well the pitch offered a bit at times (Michael Holding, Sky Sports TV) e. Your pension, you’ve been told you’ve got to pay more (Interviewee, BBC Radio 5) f. Wales, it’s just gonna rain all day (Lisa O’Sullivan, Talksport Radio) g. Germany, I think Portugal were unlucky (Alan Brazil, Talksport Radio) h. Panama, I fully expect us to win (Frank Lampard, BBC1 TV) i. Casey Stoner, there isn’t a better rider in the world (Commentator, Eurosport TV) j. Bale, I thought that was an absolutely super cross (Jimmy Armfield, BBC Radio 5)
Since the fronted constituents in (47) are topicalised DPs, it is implausible to maintain that they are light nouns with minimal content. Data like (46, 47) suggest that prepositions can be ghosted in structures involving A-bar movement more generally (and not just in relative clauses in particular), and Collins and Radford’s analysis singularly fails to capture this
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210 Gapless Relatives generalisation – on the contrary, it wrongly predicts that sentences like (46, 47) will not occur.15 An additional problem with Collins and Radford’s analysis concerns their claim that the ‘missing’ preposition in gapless relatives is pied-piped (and not stranded). This claim is problematic for relative clauses like those bracketed in the (a) examples in (48–54) below, where the ghosted preposition is one which can be stranded as we see from the corresponding (b) examples, but cannot readily be fronted as the (c) examples show: (48)
a. They both played really well, [which you can’t ask for much more at this level] (Tennis coach, BBC Radio 5) b. . . . [which you can’t ask for much more than at this level] c. . . . *[than which you can’t ask for much more at this level]
(49)
a. It’s something [that I’ve been very excited about the prospect] (Chris Huyton, Talksport Radio) b. . . . something [which I’ve been very excited about the prospect of ] c. . . . *something [of which I’ve been very excited about the prospect]
(50)
a. The South Africans can’t believe that they are winning in a game [that in the first half, they were totally outplayed] (Alan Green, BBC Radio 5) b. . . . a game [that in the first half of, they were totally outplayed] c. . . . *a game [of which in the first half, they were totally outplayed]
(51)
a. They have a young Tunisian guy, Bassem Srarfi, [who I really like what I have seen] (Guy Mowbray, Sky Sports TV) b. . . . [who I really like what I have seen of ] c. . . . *[of whom I really like what I have seen]
(52)
a. FIFA have got a lot [to answer] (Ally McCoist, Talksport Radio) b. . . . a lot [to answer for] c. . . . *a lot [ for which to answer]
(53)
a. That’s difficult [to make a judgement] (Civil servant, BBC Radio 5) b. That’s difficult [to make a judgement about] c. *That’s difficult [about which to make a judgement]
15
Other types of gapless clause which potentially involve a missing preposition include clefts like that in (i) below, and comparatives like that in (ii): (i) I think it’s the humidity [that England are going to have to be careful ] (Alan Brazil, Talksport Radio) (ii) He uses the ball much better than [people give him credit ] (Glen Hoddle, BY Sport TV) Both might potentially be analysed as involving a null operator which serves as the complement of a silent preposition.
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(54)
a. That’s [where people are coming in large numbers] (Interviewee, BBC Radio 5) b. That’s [where people are coming from in large numbers] c. *That’s [ from where people are coming in large numbers]
(55)
a. [What I do agree with Jamie] is it certainly hasn’t got that X-factor (Dwight Yorke, Sky Sports TV] b. [What I do agree with Jamie about] is . . . c. *[About what I do agree with Jamie] is . . .
(56)
a. I think that’s [what they brought Steve Bruce in] (Listener, Talksport Radio) b. . . . that’s [what they brought Steve Bruce in for] c. * . . . that’s [ for what they brought Steve Bruce in]
Structures like (48–56) above which contain a preposition that can be stranded but not pied-piped provide a strong empirical challenge to Collins and Radford’s analysis. In this section and the last, I have outlined two different types of analysis of gapless relatives, both of which take them to involve silent prepositions. In the previous section, I explored analyses which involve deletion of a stranded preposition, whereas in this section I have outlined an alternative analysis which sees them as involving deletion of a fronted preposition. In the remainder of this section, I discuss problems which arise under either variant of the silent preposition analysis. One such is that (certain kinds of) gapless relative will give rise to constraint violations if they are taken to involve relativisation of the complement of a silent preposition: this means that the relevant types of structure will wrongly be predicted not to occur. As a case in point, consider the following structures (where WH denotes a null relative pronoun, and for concreteness I assume that the silent preposition is stranded): (57)
a. We have languages [which we don’t know [what is going on ]] (Ken Wexler, talk given to Fifth Annual Conference on Formal Linguistics, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, China) b. We’ve got a game on [WH that no-one really knows [what’s happening ]] (Presenter, Talksport Radio) c. This is a race [WH you never know [what’s going to happen ]] (Anthony Davidson, BBC Radio 5) d. I’m very worried that we’re gonna have a Brexit [WH that we don’t know [what’s coming ]] (Listener, BBC Radio 5)
Under silent preposition analyses of such sentences, the overt relative pronoun which or a null WH counterpart originates as the object of the angle-bracketed
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212 Gapless Relatives preposition, and from there moves to the front of the relative clause, with the preposition being stranded under one version of the analysis, and pied-piped under another. But in either eventuality, the fronted relative constituent will cross the interrogative wh-operator what, thereby inducing a violation of the Intervention Condition, which bars movement of likes across likes (e.g. one wh-constituent crossing another).16 Similarly, silent preposition analyses will give rise to a different kind of constraint violation in structures such as those below: (58)
a. We want reaction from the Southampton dressing-room, [which [the door ] remains firmly shut] (Keith Hill, BBC Radio 5) b. If there’s no money available, then why not tell the fans, [who [some ] pay five or six grand for a season ticket]? (Alan Brazil, BBC Radio 5) c. There are drugs [WH that we still don’t know what [the application ] is going to be] (Scientist, BBC World Service) d. They see something [WH that often [the security ] isn’t that good] (Art expert, BBC World Service) e. The South Africans can’t believe that they are winning in a game [WH that [in the first half ] they were totally outplayed] (Alan Green, BBC Radio 5) f. He’s winning on a bike [WH that [the tyres ], he doesn’t like] (Commentator, Eurosport2 TV)
Under silent preposition analyses, the relative pronoun which/who/WH originates as the object of the angle-bracketed preposition, and from there moves to the front of the relative clause. Irrespective of whether the preposition is stranded or pied-piped, this movement will incur a violation of the Constraint on Extraction Domains/CED, which (as we saw in §2.3) permits extraction only out of complements. In the case of (58a–58d), the CED violation arises because the italicised preposition originates inside a [bracketed] subject, and subjects occupy the specifier position in a TP (or SUBJP): in the case of (58e), the CED violation arises because the preposition originates within a bracketed peripheral PP which occupies the specifier position in a MODP projection; and in the case of (58f), the violation comes about because the preposition originates inside a bracketed DP which is the specifier of a TOPP projection. Thus, both the stranding and pied-piping variants of the silent preposition analysis wrongly predict that sentences like those in (58) will not occur. 16
On the Intervention Condition, see Starke (2001), Rizzi (2004b), Endo (2007), and Haegeman (2012). This type of movement could alternatively be taken to violate the Wh-Island Constraint of Ross (1967), the Subjacency Condition of Chomsky (1973) and Rizzi (1982), the Barrierhood Condition of Chomsky (1986), the Relativised Minimality Condition of Rizzi (1990), and the Phase Impenetrability Condition of Chomsky (1998).
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A further problem for any type of silent preposition analysis of gapless relatives is posed by the observation that my data contain 113 nonprepositional gapless relatives like those bracketed below: (59)
a. You look at some of the other papers, [who, it’s not going to be just the News of The World running dodgy practices] b. They didn’t come, [which I’m a big Cavani fan] (Alan Brazil, Talksport Radio, commenting on Cavani and another player not coming to England) c. I’ve just got to meet Valentino Rossi, [which I’ve been watching him for years] (Lewis Hamilton, BBC2 TV) d. Andy Murray met Roger Federer on both occasions, [which there’s no embarrassment in losing to Roger Federer] (Greg Rosetsky, BBC Radio 5) e. It’s a decision [that I know where they were coming from] (Paul Nixon, BBC Radio 5) f. And now it’s hello to Graham Taylor, [who have you managed to lift your head after that six-nil defeat at St James’s Park?] (Colin Murray, BBC Radio 5) g. My thanks to Matt Murray, [who, what did you make of that goalkeeping performance by Ben Foster?] (Presenter, Talksport Radio)
For such structures it is implausible to posit that all that has happened is that a preposition has been given a silent spellout. For example, adding the italicised prepositions in (60) below does not yield an appropriate paraphrase of (59a): (60)
You look at some of the other papers, who, it’s not going to be just the News of The World running dodgy practices (*on/*about/*over/*at/*on/ *in/*by/*with)
For this reason, I term structures like those in (59) ‘non-prepositional gapless relatives’. However, it should be noted that Collins and Radford argue that a silent preposition analysis is tenable for a sentence like (59a) if we posit a more elaborate abstract structure which involves not only ghosting of a preposition (italicised below), but also ghosting of an additional string like that underlined below: (61)
You look at some of the other papers, who it’s not going to be just the News of The World running dodgy practices (adapted from Collins & Radford 2015: 26)
But a structure like (61) requires us to posit that not only is the complementiser that deleted and a preposition ghosted (e.g. about in 61 and in 59a–59e, and perhaps to in 59f, 59g), but also the string I would say. This is doubly problematic, because deletion of a string like I would say potentially violates
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214 Gapless Relatives the Recoverability Condition (8), and further violates a constituency condition to the effect that only a complete constituent can undergo operations like movement or deletion (because I would say is not a complete clause).17 To summarise: in this section I have outlined a syntactic analysis developed by Collins & Radford (2015) under which gapless relatives are taken to involve relativisation of the complement of a fronted preposition which subsequently undergoes ghosting (and is thereby given a silent spellout at PF in order to avoid violating an Edge Constraint which rules out structures in which there is more than one overt constituent on the edge of a phase). However, I went on to outline numerous problems with the analysis (e.g. it uses an excessively powerful descriptive apparatus which overgenerates, it relies heavily on an Edge Constraint which is undermined by numerous potential counterexamples, it wrongly restricts preposition omission to relatives when empirical evidence suggests that it also occurs in interrogatives and topic structures, and it cannot handle gapless relatives containing unpied-pipable prepositions). I further argued that both the stranding and the pied-piping variants of the silent preposition analysis give rise to constraint violations, and fail to provide a straightforward account of non-prepositional gapless relatives (i.e. those which cannot be paraphrased by a structure involving the addition of a preposition alone). Having seen in this section and the last that there are considerable problems facing any attempt to analyse all gapless relatives as silent preposition structures, in the next section I explore the possibility of developing prepositionless analyses of some of them. 4.4
Prepositionless Analyses
In the two previous sections, we have examined syntactic analyses which take gapless relatives to involve a silent preposition, and seen that they run into numerous problems. In this section, I will explore prepositionless analyses which seek to analyse some types of gapless relative without positing that they involve relativisation of the complement of a null preposition. An analysis of this ilk is proposed by Gordon & Patterson (1979) for gapless relatives such as the following (cited on pp. 8–10 of their paper):
17
Collins and Radford (2015: 30–1) propose a somewhat baroque analysis to circumvent the constituency problem, which involves additional movement and ghosting operations (fronting the what-clause and ghosting the remnant TP, as well as a separate operation ghosting the preposition about). However, I will not pursue this here.
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a. There are many other areas [which the architect must apply himself ] (Arthur Eriksen, CBC TV) b. This is something [which I’ve always had a sort of gut feeling] (Gary Welsh, CBC Radio) c. This is something [which the members of the alliance are concerned] (Jack Brooks, CTV) d. These are the kind of things [tourists have been drawn to Great Britain] (Henry Champ, CTV) e. Here is a period [which I thought the Canadians produced their best goal chances of the season] (Red Fisher, CBC TV) f. This is the sort of thing [we’re investing so much money], I wonder if it should be investigated in the public realm (Caller, CBC Radio)
Under the silent preposition analyses outlined in the two previous sections, these would involve relativising the object of a missing preposition such as to in (62a), about in (62b, 62c), for in (62d), and in in (62e, 62f). However, Gordon and Patterson propose the following alternative (prepositionless) analysis of such sentences (where the terms weak/strong mean ‘of low/high informational content’): More careful examination of the examples reveals that the relative clause . . . is grammatical without the missing preposition, and that it is functioning, in a communicative sense, as a principal clause. In other words, these sentences, although consisting superficially of a relative clause embedded into a weak matrix, are in fact weak principal clauses followed by strong principal clauses . . . The loss of the dependent preposition is the result of the conversion of an underlying relative clause to a surface structure principal clause (Gordon & Patterson: 1979: 10–11)
This seems to imply that sentences like (62) undergo some form of restructuring operation by which a relative clause is converted into a principal clause, so that speakers in effect end up producing two main clauses. And yet, it is entirely unclear what kind of restructuring mechanism they have in mind. After all, sentences like those in (62) are not paraphrasable as coordinate principal/root clauses. For example (62b) is not paraphrasable as ‘This is something and I’ve always had a gut feeling’, nor (62d) as ‘These are the kind of things and tourists have been drawn to Great Britain’, nor (62f) as ‘This is the sort of thing and we’re investing so much money.’ In short, Gordon and Patterson’s proposal seems highly problematic. However, in the remainder of this section, I will propose alternative analyses which capture their core intuition. More specifically, I will argue that certain types of gapless kind relatives and appositive relatives are genuinely prepositionless.
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216 Gapless Relatives Let’s begin by looking at kind relatives. As the bracketed relative clauses in the (a) examples in (63–70) below illustrate, gapless kind relatives (whether introduced by which, who, that or ø) typically allow a prepositionless paraphrase like that found in the corresponding (b) examples: (63)
a. One-nil is always a score [which you can get back in] (Robbie Savage, BBC Radio 5) b. . . . a score [such that you can always get back into the game]
(64)
a. He did cross two balls into the box [which nothing happened] (Listener, Talksport Radio) b. . . . two balls . . . [such that nothing happened]
(65)
a. I met someone [who, we just clicked] (Sex therapist, BBC Radio 5) b. . . . someone [such that we just clicked]
(66)
a. He’s someone [who, even my old gran can bat better] (Geoff Boycott, BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra) b. . . . someone [such that even my old gran can bet better]
(67)
a. It’s a decision [that I know where they were coming from] (Paul Nixon, BBC Radio 5) b. . . . a decision [such that I know where they were coming from]
(68)
a. Prime ministers have to make decisions [that some are public, some are not] (Tony Livesey, BBC Radio 5) b. . . . decisions [such that some are public, some are not]
(69)
a. He’s someone [ø if he can’t have Ann, no-one else can] (Listener, BBC Radio 5) b. . . . a person [such that if he can’t have Ann, no-one else can]
(70)
a. This is a race [ø you never know what’s going to happen] (Anthony Davidson, BBC Radio 5) b. . . . [such that you never know what’s going to happen]
Such relatives have the twin properties that (i) they have a kind interpretation, and (ii) ‘the relative clause . . . is grammatical without the missing preposition’ (Gordon & Patterson 1979: 10) – indeed in some cases (e.g. 65a) there is no natural prepositional paraphrase. Instead of being syntactically encoded via use of an (overt or silent) preposition, the relation between the relative pronoun and the rest of the relative clause is determined by pragmatic inferencing. For example, the inference is drawn in (66a) that my gran could bat better than the person denoted by he (and the same inferencing mechanism is employed in nonrelative clauses in cases like ‘He’s hopeless. Even my old gran can bat better’).
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Adopting this kind of analysis of gapless kind relatives means that they will not give rise to constraint violations. This is because they involve an in situ silent kind relativiser (below denoted as SUCH) directly merged in spec-RELP, and this means that since they do not involve movement of a relative pronoun, they do not give rise to violation of movement constraints (unlike silent preposition analyses). This point can be illustrated in relation to (71a) below, where the relative clause has the structure (71b) if analysed as a prepositionless kind relative, but the derivation (71c) under one implementation of the silent preposition analysis (where WH designates a silent relative pronoun that undergoes Wh-Movement): (71)
a. We’ve got a game on [that no-one really knows what’s happening] (= 57b) b. [RELP SUCH [REL that] no-one really knows what’s happening] c. [RELP WH [REL that] no-one really knows what’s happening —]
Under the silent preposition analysis in (71c), a null relative pronoun (WH) will be wh-moved from the gap position to the edge of RELP, and in the process will cross the interrogative wh-operator what, thereby incurring an intervention violation, and wrongly predicting that sentences like (71a) will not occur. By contrast, under the kind analysis in (71b), the kind relativiser SUCH is generated in situ on the edge of the relative clause, and since no movement is involved, there is no violation of any movement constraint – so accounting for the observed occurrence of gapless kind relatives like those in (63–70). The same point can be made in relation to (68a) above (repeated as 72a) below. Under the kind analysis, the relative clause will have the structure (72b), whereas under one implementation of the silent preposition analysis, it will have the structure (72c): (72)
a. Prime ministers have to make decisions [that some are public, some are not] b. [RELP SUCH [REL that] some are public, some are not] c. [RELP WH [REL that] some — are public, some — are not]
If (contrary to what is proposed here) we were to adopt the silent preposition analysis in (72c), we would face the problem that the null relative pronoun WH will somehow have to involve an across-the-board movement out of both gap positions to the front of the relative clause, and in the process of being extracted out of subject QPs of the form [QP [Q some] of WH], it will lead to a double violation of the Constraint on Extraction Domains/CED, since CED bars extraction out of specifiers. Moreover, if the two some-clauses are coordinated (e.g. by a null counterpart of and), Wh-Movement in (72c) will also incur
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218 Gapless Relatives a double violation of the Coordinate Structure Constraint of Ross (1967), barring extraction out of a coordinate structure. By contrast, under the in situ analysis in (72b), an abstract kind relativiser (SUCH) is directly merged in spec-RELP and (since it does not undergo movement) does not give rise to any movement constraint violation. Thus, analysing gapless kind relatives as involving a prepositionless structure introduced by an in situ kind relativiser offers the descriptive advantage of dispensing with the complex descriptive apparatus required by silent preposition analyses (particularly under the Ghosting approach), and the theoretical advantage of accounting for why gapless kind relatives are not ruled out by constraints on movement operations. In addition to gapless kind relatives like those above, my data also contain 87 examples of gapless which appositives like those bracketed below:18 (73)
18
a. This has gotta be a building job, [which hopefully I’m now here for four years] (David Moyes, Talksport Radio) b. A lot of the Czech fans are in red shirts, [which actually the Russians are playing in red tonight] (Alistair Bruce-Ball, BBC Radio 5)
This may well be a substantial underestimate, since many of the gapless relatives that I have analysed as potentially prepositional could alternatively be analysed as non-prepositional. A typical example is the following: (i)
It’s a very difficult time for Philip Hughes’ family, which eventually things will go on as normal, I guess (Mark Bosnic, Talksport Radio)
Here, which could potentially be analysed as the complement of a silent counterpart of the preposition for, with the antecedent of which being ‘Philip Hughes’ family’. However, an alternative possibility is that the antecedent of which is the clause ‘It’s a very difficult time for Philip Hughes’ family’, with which seemingly having an interpretation similar to that of the subordinating conjunction although. Conversely, there are also a few cases like (ii) below in which a gapless relative which I have classified as non-prepositional could alternatively be analysed as prepositional: (ii)
It hit him above the knee, which the DRS says it hit him in line (Geoff Boycott, BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra)
Under (one implementation of) a non-prepositional analysis, which might be seen as having much the same function as a subordinating conjunction like although. However, an alternative would be to treat the relative clause in (ii) as a prepositional structure where which serves as the complement of an about-phrase that functions as the complement of says – albeit the corresponding prepositional relative clause in (iii) below is ungrammatical if about is stranded clause internally: (iii) *which the DRS says ― it hit him in line As these cases illustrate, classifying a gapless relative as prepositional or non-prepositional is not always straightforward.
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c. This sets up a grudge match between West Ham and Sheffield United, [which some at Bramhall Lane still blame West Ham for their relegation] (Ian Abrahams, Talksport Radio) d. That was a great save with his foot, [which you see keepers using their foot a lot more these days] (Owen Hargreaves, BT Sport TV) e. This place has got a separate kitchen, [which I know everything you saw in Dorset was open plan] (Jasmine Harman, Channel 4 TV) f. He’s not played for Arsenal for a month, [which he had 90 minutes for Switzerland a week ago] (Commentator, ITV)
Such relatives are not kind relatives, and hence cannot be given the type of analysis proposed for kind relatives in (63–72) above. Moreover, sentences like (73) have no straightforward prepositional paraphrase, so they seemingly can’t be given either type of silent preposition analysis outlined in the two previous sections. So how are they to be analysed? As we will see below, a variety of prepositionless analyses have been proposed for gapless appositives in work dating back to the 1980s. In his description of Somerset English, Ihalainen (1980: 190) discusses gapless appositives like the which-clauses below: (74)
a. It’s Cheddar Road is my postal address, Cheddar Road Wedmore, which Wedmore is a mile and a half from here b. I was in Cheddar just for the evening, which there was different things going on in Cheddar c. Well, rather than he’d sell those apples to a cider merchant, which a lot of people are against cider, he’d let his cows have the apples
Ihalainen argues that which in this use cannot be a relative pronoun because ‘there does not appear to be an obvious antecedent for which’, and instead he categorises it as ‘a connector as it simply connects two statements’ (ibid.). By the term connector, he seems to mean ‘conjunction’, with a coordinating function (like and) in sentences like (74a), and a subordinating function (like because) in (74b, 74c) where (he claims) which expresses reason. In a similar vein, in his description of the dialect of Farnworth (near Manchester, UK), Shorrocks (1982: 339) reports on ‘a most remarkable’ use of which in sentences such as the following: (75)
a. And the first pint used to come off the winning landlord of the pub. See what I mean? Which a pint was only 3½d then or 4d b. And then [they] used to call at that afternoon, which he weren’t open at the first thing of a morning when they used to call c. . . . and the womenfolk awhoam [‘at home’], which every woman then used to wear thick, woollen stockings
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220 Gapless Relatives Shorrocks (ibid.) comments that in this use, ‘which often appears simply to link clauses – sometimes in a rather loose manner – having a value similar to conjunctions such as and, but, for, since, because, that or as’. Miller (1988: 113) reports a similar use of which occurring in appositives in Lothian Scottish English, in sentences such as: (76)
. . . I have to stay on to May, which when I’m 16 in March I could be looking for a job
He claims (ibid.) that which in this kind of use ‘is not a relative pronoun tying a relative clause to a particular noun but functions like a conjunction, signalling a connection between the preceding text and following one’. In much the same vein, Miller & Weinert (1998: 111) claim that ‘the function of which is to signal a general link between the material that precedes it and the material following’, and accordingly they categorise it as a conjunction or a complementiser. Miller (1988: 113) maintains that this use of which dates back to the time of Dickens, noting that ‘Mr Wegg in Our Mutual Friend uses the construction, and throughout the nineteenth century it was a favourite device of cartoonists in Punch who wanted to signal that a character was working class’. In much the same vein, Kjellmer (1988) reports that this kind of structure dates back to the eighteenth century, and is found in the work of Jonathan Swift. Kuha (1994) collected a corpus of gapless relatives in the early 1990s, which included examples such as the following: (77)
a. She gained a half pound, [which they were predicting she’d gain five pounds] b. Those are warm jammies, [which it’s been real warm lately] c. And you got a side dish with it, [which I had a gratin dauphinois]
Discussing these data, she comments that ‘This which does not carry out the function of a relative pronoun.’ Instead she treats it as a connective, referring to it as ‘coordinate which’ (Kuha 1994: 3). She also reports that ‘This nonstandard feature has been observed in the speech of educated speakers in informal situations, and also during lectures and nationally televised interviews’ (1994: 1), and presents evidence from a matched guise test that the feature is ‘not necessarily associated with low-prestige lects’ (ibid.). Reid (1997: 158–67) reports examples of gapless appositive which occurring in a corpus of spoken Australian English that she collected, including the following: (78)
Took it out of my . . . pay, which I was going to pay cash (Reid 1997: 161)
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She notes that which in this kind of use ‘does not represent an argument of the verb, or an adverbial’ (1997: 164) but rather serves to ‘link the embedded clause to an earlier proposition’ (1997: 162). She refers to this kind of relative as a ‘linking relative clause’, and describes which in this use as ‘conjunctional’ in nature (1997: 164). Subsequent research on gapless relatives was conducted by Rudy Loock (reported in Loock 2005, 2007b, 2010), using data from Kuha’s corpus, the British National Corpus, and a corpus of his own which included examples of spontaneous English from radio and television, as well as examples like the following from conversation: (79)
And she decided to move out, which I think she’s crazy
Loock claims that which in such appositive relative clauses/ARCs does not function as a relative pronoun because ‘No gap is apparent in the ARC and also, no antecedent seems to be systematically retrievable for the relative’ (2007b: 75). Instead, he maintains that which in gapless relatives plays the syntactic role of a connective/conjunction, noting that gapless which can sometimes be paraphrased by a coordinating conjunction, and sometimes by a subordinating conjunction. Moreover, the conjunction analysis also has diachronic plausibility, in that van Gelderen (2009) has documented reanalysis of pronouns as conjunctions in a wide range of languages. Loock argues that which has the discourse function of floor keeping (in effect, discouraging other people from interrupting). A more recent analysis of gapless relatives is presented in Burke (2017), based primarily on data from the University of Western Australia/UWA corpus of Australian English, including examples such as the following: (80)
a. I’ve got dad’s genes, which his three sisters are all big, fat (UWA Corpus 2012) b. I mean you have to be insured . . . which, we don’t mind bein’ insured really but it does cost a lot (UWA corpus 2015) c. But unfortunately we had to say good-bye to the dog, which we’ve formed a . . . very good relationship of course with the dog (UWA corpus 2015) d. So when I had my lunch today, which I enjoyed my lunch very much, thank you, I noticed that you didn’t give me the cinnamon peanut butter (Overheard example)
Following Reid (1997), Burke categorises such which-clauses as ‘linking relatives’. She argues that which in this kind of use ‘is no longer a true relative marker’ (2017: 360) but rather has taken on the role of a connective/conjunction (or perhaps a complementiser), and she gives three reasons for this. Firstly,
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222 Gapless Relatives which ‘has no true antecedent’ (2017: 361); secondly, it ‘has no function inside the relative clause’ (ibid); and thirdly, it can be paraphrased by coordinating conjunctions like and/but or by subordinating conjunctions of causality (e.g. since) or concession (e.g. although). A common theme running through the various analyses sketched above is that gapless appositive which in sentences like (74–80) above no longer functions as a relative pronoun, but rather has become reanalysed as a conjunction. Potential support for the conjunction analysis comes from the observation that gapless which always occurs on its own in the periphery of the clause, and is never accompanied by other material. This is in contrast to the use of relative pronouns like which/who in resumptive relatives, where (as reported in §2.5) we can find additional material like that underlined below (e.g. a preposition or possessum) accompanying the relative pronoun: (81)
a. There may be several of them, [one of which we know where it is] (Scientist interviewed on BBC science show, Kroch corpus) b. It’s based on a series of novels by Peter Robinson, [of which I’ve read quite a few of them] (TV critic, BBC Radio 5) c. It’s the four outfield players that count, [of which Joe Cole has got to be one of them] (Listener, BBC Radio 5) d. He was working with the spinners, [of whom which of them they will select remains a mystery] (Australian reporter, Talksport Radio) e. We have Olsen courted by the media, writing a CBS reporter from his cell and being allowed a lengthy ‘apology’ to the parents of the children, [some of whom he recorded their death throttles as he drove spikes into their brains] (Reporter in Ottawa Citizen, Kroch corpus) f. It’s good for making contacts – especially this lady [whose mother I stayed out at her house] (example from Pawley & Syder 1983, cited in Kroch corpus)
The observation that gapless which occurs as an orphan in the clause periphery can clearly be accounted for in a straightforward fashion if it has been reanalysed as a conjunction. Nevertheless, the conjunction analysis proves to be potentially problematic for a number of reasons. One of these concerns the multiple interpretations of gapless which. According to the authors cited above, it can either function as a coordinating conjunction paraphrasable as ‘and’ or ‘but’ or as a subordinating conjunction paraphrasable as ‘because’, ‘although’ and so on. Its apparent polysemicity can be illustrated by the examples below: (82)
a. This has gotta be a building job, which hopefully I’m now here for four years (David Moyes, Talksport Radio)
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b. I remember being at my mother’s bedside, which she was dying of cancer (Jasminder Singh, BBC Radio 4) c. You have to stop pedalling, which obviously you’re going to lose momentum (Polyanna Woodward, Channel 5 TV) d. He’s not played for Arsenal for a month, which he had 90 minutes for Switzerland a week ago (Commentator, ITV) e. Indonesia is offering to send a team to Japan to help, which Indonesia has had lots of earthquakes in the past (Reporter, BBC Radio 5)
Thus, which is paraphrasable by a coordinating conjunction like and/but in (82a), and by a variety of subordinating conjunctions in the remaining examples (when/while in 82b, so in 82c, although in 82d, because in 82e). While there are some conjunctions in English which have more than one interpretation (e.g. since can function both as a temporal subordinating conjunction paraphrasable as ‘from the time when’ or as a causal subordinating conjunction paraphrasable as ‘because’), there are none which can fulfil both a coordinating function and a multiplicity of subordinating functions. This inevitably casts doubt on the plausibility of the conjunction analysis. Another problem with the conjunction analysis can be illustrated in relation to the gapless relative in (77a) above ‘She gained a half pound, which they were predicting she’d gain 5 pounds’. At first sight, we might follow Loock (2007b: 79) in taking which in such sentences to function as a connective that ‘relates or links two clauses, one of which is subordinate to the other’, and suppose that which is a concessive subordinating conjunction in this use, with much the same function as although. However, Collins and Radford (2015: 6) note that which differs from typical subordinating conjunctions in that the which-clause cannot be positioned in front of the main clause, even though this is possible with subordinate clauses introduced by a subordinating conjunction like although: (83)
a. She gained half a pound, although/which they were predicting she’d gain five pounds b. Although/*which they were predicting she’d gain five pounds, she gained half a pound
The fact that gapless which can occur after but not before the clause it is associated with argues against which being a conjunction and in favour of it being a relative pronoun, since relative pronouns generally follow their antecedents.19 19
One exception to this is that an appositive relative clause with a clausal antecedent can be positioned internally within the clause which serves as its antecedent, like these which-clauses:
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224 Gapless Relatives Furthermore (Collins and Radford note), the two also differ in that a focus particle like even can be used to modify a subordinating conjunction like though or a non-relative pronoun like she, but not a relative pronoun like which/who: (84)
a. She gained half a pound, (even) though they were predicting she’d gain five pounds b. She gained half a pound, (*even) which they were predicting she’d gain five pounds c. He asked Mary, and (even) she didn’t know the answer d. He asked Mary, (*even) who didn’t know the answer
The fact that which in (84b) behaves like the relative pronoun who in (84d) in resisting modification by even makes it likely that gapless appositive which should be treated as a relative pronoun, not as a conjunction. Further support for this view comes from the observation that (contrary to what is claimed by those advocating the conjunction analysis) which is not the only relative pronoun found in gapless appositives, since my broadcast English data also contain gapless appositives like those bracketed below introduced by who:20 (85)
a. It’s a chance for him to look at one or two others (sc. players), [who there’s always someone who comes from nowhere] (Matt Holland, Talksport Radio) b. You look at some of the other papers, [who, it’s not going to be just the News of the World running dodgy practices] (Reporter, Talksport Radio)
(i) (ii)
Scotland Yard have said, which again is one on the front page of the Telegraph, that leaks are jeopardising their work (Journalist, BBC Radio 5) The president, which nobody had expected, decided to sack the chief of the FBI
Interestingly, my data contain the following example of a gapless which-clause positioned internally within its clausal antecedent: (iii) Max Clifford said, which I don’t agree with Max Clifford very often, that Wayne Rooney has a right to privacy (Stan Collymore, Talksport Radio)
20
Here, the antecedent of which is the matrix clause about Max Clifford saying that Wayne Rooney has a right to privacy, and the gapless which-clause is embedded internally within its antecedent clause, underlining that gapless appositive which clauses have the distributional properties of typical appositive relatives. It should be noted, however, that my data contain only 7 examples of who used in nonprepositional gapless appositives, compared to 87 examples with which. This disparity is much more marked than in the case of resumptive relatives, where my data contain 135 resumptive which relatives compared to 95 resumptive who relatives. It could be, therefore, that there are speakers who accept non-prepositional gapless appositives with which, but not with who: if so, a conjunction analysis might be plausible for such speakers.
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c. We had Wilshere up there, [who, nobody seemed to want to keep the ball] (Neil Warnock, Talksport Radio) d. He’s up against his old side, [who, Harry will know all about Steve] (Ray Houghton, Talksport Radio; Harry Redknapp and Steve Bruce are the managers of the two sides in question) e. The same can’t be said for Kittel, [who, it was a bit messy in the final sprint] (Daniel Lloyd, Eurosport TV) f. They played great, especially the two guys at the back, [who I thought Nemanja Vidic was outstanding] (Roy Keane, ITV) g. They went and tried to negotiate a deal with another player, who it never happened (Jason Cundy, Talksport Radio)
As argued in §1.5, who is a relative pronoun, as we see from the observation that it is gender-sensitive and requires an antecedent whose head noun denotes one or more humans (like Kittel, Wilshere, guys, etc).21 Hence structural uniformity considerations suggest that we should treat which in gapless relatives like (73) as a relative pronoun too. Moreover, contrary to the suggestion made earlier that the relative pronoun in gapless relatives always occurs as an orphan, my own intuition is that it can (in principle) be accompanied by other material – as in the (constructed) examples below: (86)
a. He bought her the most amazing presents, [some of which, I’ve never seen anything so spectacular] b. I’ve got a friend [whose mum, I’ve never met anyone who can cook like that]
Clearly, appositive clauses like those bracketed in (86) above are only consistent with which/whose being relative pronouns, not with them being conjunctions. However, analysing gapless appositive which as a relative pronoun raises the question of how we can reconcile such an analysis with the claim made by Ihalainen, Loock and Burke that gapless appositive which cannot be a relative pronoun because it has no antecedent. The answer is that their claim is highly questionable, because it overlooks the possibility of appositive which in 21
As noted by Collins & Radford (2015), nouns like side and (news)papers can be treated as honorary human nouns and thus be used as the antecedent of who in sentences such as: (i)
On the afternoon, we got beaten by a side who were better than us (Steve Hansen, Irish Independent News) (ii) Those newspapers who support the government wanted the age to be twelve (Parliamentary Debates, New Zealand Parliament, vol. 306, 1955) In this respect, they function like collective nouns denoting sets of humans.
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226 Gapless Relatives gapless relative having the same kind of clausal antecedent as it has in gap relatives like: (87)
She collapsed on the way to work, which everyone was horrified by —
Thus in (87), which originates in the gap position and moves to the front of the relative clause, and its antecedent is the underlined matrix clause. Since which can have a clausal antecedent in a gap relative like (87), there is every reason to suppose that it can also have a clausal antecedent in a gapless appositive like (88) below (repeated from 77a above): (88)
She gained a half pound, which they were predicting she’d gain five pounds
The antecedent for which in a gapless appositive like (88) is the (underlined) main clause preceding the which-clause. Thus, the claim that gapless appositive which has no antecedent seems misplaced. If we suppose that who is used in gapless appositive relatives where the antecedent is human (as in 85 above), and which otherwise, it follows that which will be used in structures like (88) where its antecedent is a genderless clause. A further question which arises if we analyse gapless appositive which/who as a relative pronoun is how it is generated, and how it is linked to its antecedent on the one hand, and to the rest of the relative clause on the other. The answer I shall suggest for the first question is that the relative pronoun is directly merged in situ on the edge of RELP – exactly as argued for relative pronouns in resumptive relatives in Chapter 2. On this view, the relative clause bracketed in (89a) below (repeated from 85a above) will have the structure in (89b): (89)
a. It’s a chance for him to look at one or two others, [who there’s always someone who comes from nowhere] (others = ‘other players’) b. [RELP who [REL ø] there’s always someone who comes from nowhere]
The relative pronoun who will be base-generated on the edge of RELP, and (by virtue of not falling within the domain of any case assigner) will receive default case, and hence be spelled out as who (and not e.g. whom). As for the second question, the relative pronoun in this instance has much the same aboutness interpretation as a dislocated topic, and thus has an interpretation paraphrasable as ‘about whom I would comment that . . . ’ A similar analysis can be proposed for the relative clause in a sentence like (90a) below (repeated from 85e above), if the relative clause has the structure in (90b), with who being directly merged in situ on the edge of RELP:
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a. The same can’t be said for Kittel, [who, it was a bit messy in the final sprint] b. [RELP who [REL ø] it was a bit messy in the final sprint]
The relative pronoun who will be directly merged on the edge of RELP, and (by virtue of not falling within the domain of any case assigner) will receive default case, and hence be spelled out as who (and not e.g. whom). Linguistic knowledge (to the effect that who requires a human antecedent) will mean that Kittel is identified as the antecedent of who, and nonlinguistic knowledge (to the effect that Kittel is a famous sprinter) will mean that the pragmatic inference is drawn that Kittel was involved in a messy sprint at the end of the relevant cycle race.22 Analysing gapless appositives as involving a pragmatic link between relative clause and antecedent has typological precedents in other languages, since Chinese, Japanese and Thai have similar types of gapless relative (see Tsai 1997 and Zhang 2008 on Chinese; and Hoomchamlong 1991 on Thai). Under the analysis proposed here, colloquial English will have the three distinct types of gapless relative clause illustrated by the bracketed appositive relative clauses in the examples below: (91)
She gained half a pound, a. [which nobody had expected —] b. [which nobody could understand how it happened] c. [which they were predicting she’d gain 5 pounds]
In the terminology of Radford (2018), (91a) involves a gap-linked/G-linked relative clause, with which being linked to the relative clause by a gap; (91b) involves a resumptive-linked/R-linked relative clause, with which being linked to the relative clause by the resumptive pronoun it; and (91c) involves a pragmatically linked/P-linked relative in which the relation between which and the relative clause is determined by pragmatic inferencing (with the relative clause most likely being given a concessive interpretation along the lines of ‘although in relation to this I would comment that’ in 91c).
22
As noted in fn. 18, non-prepositional gapless relatives can sometimes be given an alternative prepositional analysis. For example, who could be treated as the complement of a silent counterpart of for, with the relative clause in (90a) having the structure below: (i)
[RELP who [REL ø] it was a bit messy – in the final sprint]
However, an analysis like (i) claims that the sprint was only messy for Kittel, whereas in reality it was arguably even more messy for the riders competing against him, as Kittel swayed from side to side on his bike, elbows and knees flailing.
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228 Gapless Relatives Radford argues that the three different types of linking illustrated in relative clauses like those in (91) above have parallels in other types of clause structure – for example, topic clauses like those below: (92)
a. Those kind of things I love —, I really do (Andy Dillon, Talksport Radio) b. These footballers, there’s a level of education that they require (Sean Udall, BBC Radio 5) c. Defoe, even I could have scored that goal (Alan Green, BBC Radio 5)
Thus, in (92a), the italicised peripheral DP is a G-linked topic, linked to the comment clause by a gap; in (92b) it is an R-linked topic, linked to the comment clause by the resumptive pronoun they; and in (92c) it is a P-linked topic, linked to the comment clause through a chain of pragmatic inferencing (with the hearer intended to infer that Defoe had just missed a goal which was so easy to score that even the sexagenarian commentator could have scored it). The question which arises from this discussion is how come topic clauses and relative clauses show the parallelism illustrated in (91, 92), when (as argued in §2.7) they have a distinct syntax, with relative pronouns occupying the specifier position in RELP, and topics occupying the specifier position in TOPP.23 The answer given in §2.7 was that this parallelism reflects the fact that TOPP and RELP are both peripheral projections, and the specifier of a peripheral projection can (in principle) be linked to the propositional component of the clause in one of three different ways, namely (i) syntactically, via a gap; (ii) lexically, via a resumptive; or (iii) pragmatically, via a chain of inferencing.
23
I am assuming here that gapless appositive which occupies the specifier position in RELP, although it is conceivable that (for some speakers – perhaps those who do not use other relative pronouns like who in gapless relatives like 85, or wh-phrases in gapless relatives like those in 86) it has become reanalysed as occupying the head of RELP, and may eventually have come to function as a complementiser (following a well-trodden path of diachronic reanalysis charted by van Gelderen 2009). Still, one reason for not analysing it as a complementiser would be that it can seemingly introduce an independent/root clause, as illustrated in the dialogue below (from the UWA 2012 corpus, cited in Burke 2017: 368): (i) [S] Well Mum wants to go to Cambodia [A] Um [S] Which I was hoping to go along depending when she chooses to go Since complementisers in English do not occur as the first word of a root clause, the italicised use of which in (i) would pose a potential problem for any analysis of which as a complementiser. For how to deal with apparent cases where complementisers seemingly introduce root clauses, see Radford (2018 ch. 3 fn. 53, and ch. 4, fn. 13).
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The assumption that gapless appositives can involve a pragmatic link between the relative clause and its antecedent raises the possibility that (at least some of) the appositive relative clauses which were treated as gap relatives under the silent preposition analyses outlined in §4.2 and §4.3 may in fact be prepositionless gapless relatives. By way of illustration, consider the relative clauses bracketed below: (93)
a. I watched Andy Murray, [who I’m a huge fan] (Barry McGuigan, Sky Sports TV) b. They’re complaining to the referee about Cristiano Ronaldo, [who possibly it was a foul on Gonzalez] (Terry Gibson, Sky Sports TV) c. They actually get the free kick here, [which James Milner scores] (Alan Shearer, BBC1 TV) d. They both played really well, [which you can’t ask for much more at this level] (Tennis coach, BBC Radio 5)
Pragmatic inferencing will lead the listener to infer in (93a) that Barry McGuigan is a fan of Andy Murray, without the need to posit that who is the object of a silent counterpart of the preposition of. The plausibility of such an analysis is illustrated by the fictitious dialogue below: (94)
speaker a: What do you think of Andy Murray? speaker b: I’m a huge fan
There is no more reason to posit that the noun fan has a silent of-phrase complement in (93a) than there is in (94). Rather, in both cases the link to Andy Murray is pragmatic rather than syntactic. In much the same way, pragmatic inferencing means that the inference is drawn that Cristiano Ronaldo is the perpetrator of the putative foul in (93b), without the need to posit the presence of a silent counterpart of by in the syntax which has who as its complement. Similarly, the inference is drawn in (93c) that Milner scores from the free kick, without the need to posit the presence of a silent occurrence of from in the syntax whose complement is which. Likewise, the inference is drawn in (93d) that you can’t ask for much more than that they both played well, without the need to posit the presence of a silent occurrence of than in the syntax that has which as its complement. More generally, under the analysis of gapless appositives proposed here, the link between the relative pronoun and the rest of the relative clause is not syntactically encoded (via a silent preposition and a gap) but rather is pragmatically inferred. Furthermore, a prepositionless analysis for relevant types of gapless relatives avoids the constraint violation problem that besets silent preposition analyses of sentences such as the following:
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230 Gapless Relatives (95)
We were mystified by the incident, [which none of us saw what happened] (Reporter, Talksport Radio)
Under one implementation of the silent preposition analysis, the relative pronoun which will originate as the complement of the preposition in at the end of the sentence, and from there will move to the front of the relative clause, so resulting in the relative clause having the structure below (with the preposition receiving a silent spellout at PF): (96)
[RELP which [REL ø] none of us saw what happened —]
However, in moving from the gap position to the italicised position, the relative pronoun will move across the interrogative operator what, thereby giving rise to an intervention violation, and so wrongly predicting that such sentences will not occur. By contrast, under the Merge analysis proposed here, the relative clause in (95) will have the structure below, with the relative pronoun which directly merged on the edge of RELP: (97)
[RELP which [REL ø] none of us saw what happened]
Since which does not undergo any movement, there is no movement constraint violation. The relative pronoun which will be interpreted as having the clause preceding it as its antecedent, and the internal relation between which and the relative clause containing it will be pragmatically inferred (perhaps with which being given an aboutness interpretation like ‘about which I would comment that . . . ’ – and in this connection, it is interesting to note that Tsai (1997) argues that the relation between the antecedent and the relative clause in gapless relatives in Chinese is typically one of aboutness. To summarise: in this section, I have explored ways of analysing certain types of gapless relative without positing that they involve relativisation of the complement of a null preposition. I began by noting that gapless kind relatives can typically be given a prepositionless paraphrase, so that the relative clause in a sentence like (71a/57b) ‘We’ve got a game on [that no-one really knows what’s happening]’ can be given a prepositionless paraphrase as ‘of such a kind that no-one really knows what’s happening’. I also argued that such an analysis avoids the complications which will result under a silent preposition analysis in which a null relative pronoun originates within the happening clause as the complement of a silent counterpart of in and moves to the front of the relative clause, but in doing so moves across the interrogative operator what, thereby giving rise to an intervention violation. I went on to note that numerous linguists have proposed a prepositionless analysis of gapless appositive
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relatives whereby which is claimed to have been reanalysed as a coordinating or subordinating conjunction with a range of different interpretations. However, I argued against this analysis on a number of grounds, noting (inter alia) that it fails to account for gapless appositives introduced by who, or by a wh-phrase like whose mother. I went on to propose an alternative analysis for gapless appositives whereby the relative whconstituent (e.g. which/who) is generated in situ on the edge of RELP and its relation to the relative clause containing it is pragmatic rather than syntactic in nature (much as it is in the gapless topic clauses discussed in Radford 2018, ch. 2). If the prepositionless analysis of kind relatives and appositive relatives sketched in this section is along the right lines, it follows that there will be far fewer cases of genuine ‘missing preposition’ relatives than assumed in much of the existing research on gapless relatives. Nonetheless, it should be noted that even if a prepositionless analysis can be motivated for many gapless kind and appositive relatives, it still leaves a residue of other gapless relatives for which a ‘missing preposition’ analysis seems to be required, including gapless restrictive relatives like (98a) below, and gapless free relatives like (98b): (98)
a. We need to prioritise the services [that we need to provide our residents ] over the winter (Hospital spokesperson, BBC Radio 5) b. [What we’re all waiting now] is the knock-on effect on Chelsea (Reporter, Sky Sports TV)
In such cases, it would seem that we need to posit that the (overt or null) relative pronoun serves as the complement of a silent preposition, since the use of the preposition in such structures is obligatory, as we see from the ungrammaticality of independent clauses like those below if the italicised preposition is omitted: (99)
a. We need to provide our residents *(with) services over the winter b. We’re all waiting *(for) the knock-on effect on Chelsea
Thus the question remains of how the preposition goes missing in gapless relative clauses whose non-relative counterparts require an obligatory preposition. If we accept that syntactic accounts of missing prepositions like those outlined in §4.2 and §4.3 are problematic, the question arises as to whether genuine cases of gapless relatives with missing prepositions could be the result of processing errors. This is an issue which I turn to explore in the next section.
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232 Gapless Relatives 4.5
Processing Analyses
A potential challenge to syntactic/pragmatic accounts of gapless relatives like those outlined in the three preceding sections is posed by an observation made by Paul Postal cited in Collins & Radford (2015: 31). Postal reports that most of the gapless relative structures cited in that paper (which are a subset of the data reported here) are ungrammatical for him, and indeed in some cases unparsable.24 This could be taken to imply that gapless relatives are not the output of a regular grammar, but rather are the result of processing errors – and indeed Jason Merchant (in a pers. comm. cited in Collins & Radford 2015) explicitly suggested that gapless relatives may be the result of a production error. Accordingly, this is an approach which I will explore in this section. It is by no means a new idea. For example, Herrmann (2003: 171) suggests that ‘[s]tranded prepositions, which are separated from their governing REL markers, are often forgotten’. One implementation of this idea is that as a result of a memory lapse, speakers may mistakenly assume that they pied-piped a preposition and so fail to spell out a copy of a preposition in the position where it originates. In a similar vein, Radford, Felser and Boxell (2012) present a processing analysis in terms of spellout errors induced by memory decay. And a parallel approach is implicit in the remark by Burke (2017: 364) that ‘Speakers may forget that they have not in fact fronted the preposition, and may intend to later strand it, but instead forget to include it altogether.’ This type of approach would be consistent with the memory lapse account of preposition doubling discussed in §3.6. Loock (2007b: 77) considers the possibility that gapless relatives may be performance/processing errors, but dismisses this on three grounds – namely (i) ‘their frequency of occurrence’, (ii) ‘their existence in other dialects of English’, and (iii) ‘their existence in writing’. However, in relation to his claim that gapless relatives occur relatively frequently, it should be noted that Loock (ibid.) concedes that ‘we do not have precise statistics’. Nevertheless, Hoffman (2011: 119) reports that out of 1,308 prepositional relatives in his corpus of Kenyan English, only 22 (1.7%) were gapless relatives (i.e. relatives which under his assumptions involve a silent preposition). Moreover, Burke (2017: 359) reports that ‘actual occurrences of this [= gapless: AR] which remain rare’. In support of her claim, she notes that out of the 1,289 appositive 24
Collins and Radford (ibid.) counter that this may be in part because gapless relatives belong to a highly colloquial register which more conservative speakers find alien to them, and in part because such structures can cause parsing problems in recovering the missing preposition.
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relative clauses in her corpus of Australian English, only 32 (2.5%) were gapless – a low frequency of occurrence which could be argued to be more consistent with them being sporadic performance errors than productive grammatical structures. But what of Loock’s observation that gapless relatives occur in a number of dialects, including (as illustrated in 74–76 above) Somerset English (Ihalainen 1980), the dialect of Farnworth near Manchester (Shorrocks 1982), and Lothian Scottish English (Miller 1988)?25 The answer is that while this is consistent with gapless relatives being a kind of grammatical construction which is found in a range of English dialects, it is equally consistent with them being sporadic production errors which would be expected to occur in any language variety that allows both preposition piedpiping and preposition stranding. Finally, consider Loock’s observation that gapless relatives are likely to be a productive grammatical construction because they occur not only in spoken registers, but also in written registers – and Loock cites examples such as the following in support of his claim: (100)
a. Oh, I dreamed of a true class reunion of our family. Just imagine their faces if they saw this place. Which, I might add, none of them came (B. Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible, Harper Perennial, 1999, p. 463) b. She and her friends raised the money and bought a good Land Rover with a rebuilt engine in Atlanta. Which, by the way, mother’s group has never raised one red cent for me . . . (op. cit. p. 475)
Once again, however, it is hard to see how the occurrence of gapless relatives in writing provides a persuasive argument in support of a grammatical analysis, since sporadic processing errors occur in all language registers. True, copyeditors strive to eliminate these from written texts at the proofreading stage, but they typically fail to spot some errors: for example, the extremely conscientious and capable copy-editor for Radford (2018), after exhaustive reading and rereading of the proofs, confessed that she was disappointed about ‘errors that seem to have got past me’. A more promising line of enquiry is suggested by the observation made by Herrmann (2003: 171) that ‘Preposition elision is frequently found after massive and/or complex intervening material.’ The implicit idea here seems to be that if gapless relatives come about as a result of memory decay (when speakers 25
To this, it might be added that gapless relatives are widespread enough to have an entry under the heading ‘linking relative clauses’, in Kortmann & Lunkenheimer’s (2013) World Atlas of Varieties of English (entry 197).
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234 Gapless Relatives wrongly think they pied-piped a preposition and so do not spell it out at the foot of the wh-chain), this should give rise to a length effect, whereby the longer the string of words intervening between the relative pronoun and the stranded preposition, the more likely it is that memory decay will result in the stranded preposition being given a null spellout. This can be illustrated in terms of the following example: (101)
Here is a period [which I thought the Canadians produced their best goal chances of the season ] (Red Fisher, CBC TV; Gordon & Patterson 1979: 8)
Here, there is an (underlined) string of 12 words intervening between the relativiser which and the stranded preposition in, making it plausible to suppose that by the time the speaker arrives at the end of the relative clause, he forgets that he used which at the beginning of the clause and mistakenly thinks that he started the relative clause with in which.26 In this connection, recall that (as noted in §3.6), Staum Casasanto & Sag (2008b) hypothesise that the acceptability of complementiser doubling increases as the number of words intervening between the two complementisers increases, suggesting that a relatively long intervening string may lead speakers to forget that they have already spelled out the complementiser earlier in the sentence. More specifically, they report that a sentence like (102b) below where seven (underlined) words intervene between the two (italicised) complementisers was judged significantly more acceptable than a sentence like (102a) where there is only one intervening word: (102)
a. John reminded Mary that soon that his brother would be ready to leave b. John reminded Mary that after he was finished with his meeting that his brother would be ready to leave
Consequently, if gapless relatives are the result of a memory lapse, we should expect them to occur mainly when there is a relatively long string (say, seven or more words) between the relative pronoun and the putative silent copy of the stranded preposition. To test for a possible length effect, I calculated the number of words intervening between the relativiser and the putative stranded preposition in the 218 gapless relatives in my data which could plausibly be hypothesized to contain a silent preposition stranded internally within the clause: I refer to this as the 26
On this scenario, we clearly have to suppose that the silent preposition is stranded at the end of the clause, not pied-piped along with (and hence immediately adjacent to) which. I will make the same assumption in relation to the data in (103) below.
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intervening string length/ISL. The table in (103) below shows the number and percentage of examples in my data with a given ISL:27 (103)
Number and percentage of prepositional gapless relatives in my data with a given ISL
ISL
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10 11–15
No.
15
23
34
36
39
27
20
9
5
2
%
6.9
10.6
15.6
16.5
17.9
12.4
9.2
4.1
2.3
0.9
These figures should be read as follows: 15 of the 218 examples of prepositional gapless relatives (6.9%) had an ISL of 2 (i.e. in 15 examples there were 2 words intervening between the relativiser and the silent preposition); 23 examples (10.6%) had an ISL of 3; 34 examples (15.6%) had an ISL of 4 . . . and so on.28 It is hard to know exactly what to make of the figures in (103). The mean ISL for all 218 examples was 5.8, and in 147 (67.4%) of cases the ISL was below the threshold figure of 7 taken by Staum Casasanto and Sag to be indicative of a length effect. Still, their figure of 7 is seemingly arbitrary, since they compared sentences with 1 intervening word against those with 7 intervening words – hence it must remain a matter of conjecture whether a similar effect would have shown up with (say) 5 or 6 intervening words. What is interesting, however, is that in a third of the relevant sentences in my data (72/218 = 33%), resumptives were used where a relatively short string of 2–4 constituents intervened between relativiser and resumptive, and it seems unlikely that the use of a resumptive would be the result of a memory lapse attributable to the length of the intervening string in such cases.29 So does this undermine the idea that missing prepositions are the result of processing errors? Not necessarily. After all, it could be that missing preposition structures with relatively long intervening strings are attributable to a memory lapse, but others 27
28
29
The counting procedure which I used was the conservative one outlined in Chapter 3, fn. 41, under which contracted forms like can’t/don’t/you’ve/gotta/gonna etc. are treated as two words. To save space, I have given a mean figure in the rightmost column for the number/percentage of examples with an ISL of between 11 and 15: in actual fact, 2 examples had an ISL of 11, 3 of 12, 2 of 13, 2 of 14, and 1 of 15. A word of caution should be noted, however. In an ideal world, in order to establish whether there is a potential length effect, we should calculate (e.g.) the percentage of prepositional relatives with a given ISL value in which the preposition is silent: if there is a length effect, we should then expect to find that the longer the ISL, the higher the proportion of prepositional relatives in which the preposition is silent/unpronounced. However, I can’t compute this figure from my data, since I only collected non-canonical relatives where the preposition is unpronounced, not canonical relatives where it is pronounced.
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236 Gapless Relatives may be the result of a different kind of processing error. More specifically, (some of) the errors may represent blends of two different target structures (see the discussion of blends in §3.6, and the references to research on blends in Chapter 3, fn. 44). For example, the gapless relatives bracketed in the (a) examples in (104–107) below could represent a blend which comes about by splicing the onset of the relative clause in the corresponding (b) example with the coda of the relative clause in the corresponding (c) example: (104)
a. And of course he got one of the three goals [which Spurs beat Burnley] (Danny Kelly, Talksport Radio) b. . . . the three goals [which Spurs beat Burnley by] c. . . . the three goals [by which Spurs beat Burnley]
(105)
a. The one Bangladesh batsman [that England would have been worried] is back in the pavilion (Michael Vaughan, BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra) b. The one Bangladesh batsman [that England would have been worried about] . . . c. The one Bangladesh batsman [about whom England would have been worried] . . .
(106)
a. It shows the confidence [he’s playing] (Danny Murphy, BBC1 TV) b. . . . the confidence [he’s playing with] c. . . . the confidence [with which he’s playing]
(107)
a. [What I do agree with him] is that there isn’t enough depth in the squad (Brian Woolnough, BBC Radio 5) b. [What I do agree with him about] . . . c. [Where I do agree with him] . . .
Thus, gapless relatives which can plausibly be taken to involve a missing preposition could be processing errors which arise either through a blend, or as the result of memory decay. Under the blend account, there would be no reason to expect an ISL effect. Overall, then, gapless relatives could either represent a type of syntactic structure which is characteristic of colloquial English (where the relation between the relativiser and the rest of the relative clause is either encoded by a silent preposition or is determined by pragmatic inferencing), or could be the result of a sporadic processing error (involving either a blend or a memory lapse). If gapless relatives are productive grammatical structures, we would expect speakers to find them relatively acceptable (at least in the case of younger, less conservative speakers), whereas if they are sporadic processing errors, we would expect them to be judged relatively unacceptable.
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In this connection, it is interesting to note that (as reported in §3.6), Radford, Felser and Boxell (2012) ran two experiments designed to test the relative grammaticality and acceptability of gapless relatives with an omitted preposition like that in (108c) below compared to that of relatives involving an overt preposition which is either pied-piped (as in 108a) or stranded (as in 108b):30 (108)
Games developers have created a world a. in which people truly want to lose themselves b. which people truly want to lose themselves in c. which people truly want to lose themselves
(preposition pied-piping) (preposition stranding) (preposition omission)
Their first experiment involved an offline paper-and-pencil task in which young native speakers of English (recruited from University of Essex staff and students aged between 19 and 24) were asked to judge the acceptability of a set of sentences like those above, along with a set of filler sentences. Participants were asked to read each test sentence carefully and then to judge how well-formed and meaningful they considered them to be, on a scale of 1–10 (with 10 representing the highest degree of acceptability). The mean scores were 8.1 (SD 0.48) for preposition pied-piping structures like (108a), 6.25 (SD 0.86) for preposition stranding structures like (108b), and 6.12 (SD 0.92) for preposition omission structures like (108c).31 The difference between the scores for pied-piping and omission were statistically significant, but those between stranding and omission were not. Radford, Felser and Boxell also conducted a second experiment (on a different group of University of Essex staff/students aged between 19 and 26) involving a speeded acceptability judgement task in which sentences were presented on a computer screen one word at a time in quick succession, and after reading the final word, participants were asked to judge as quickly as possible whether or not a given string was well-formed and meaningful, by pressing a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ button on a PC game pad. The mean percentage of ‘yes’ responses was 81.6 (SD 25.4) for preposition pied-piping, 76.6 (SD 25.4) for preposition stranding, and 25.1 (SD 10.7) for preposition omission. The difference between the scores for pied-piping and omission was statistically significant (as was that between the scores for stranding and omission), 30
31
Radford et al. also tested preposition doubling structures, but since the results for these were discussed in §3.6 and my focus in this section is on gapless relatives, I will not discuss doubling here. I shall not comment on the low score for preposition stranding here, since this has already been discussed in §3.6, and my focus here is on gapless relatives.
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238 Gapless Relatives but not that between the scores for pied-piping and stranding. Radford, Felser and Boxell also measured the mean response latencies for the three types of structure, and found that, on average, it took participants about twice as long to judge sentences that involved preposition omission as it took them to judge sentences involving pied-piping or stranding: there was a statistically significant difference in response times between omission and pied-piping (and between omission and stranding), but not between those for pied-piping and stranding. Thus, overall, gapless (preposition omission) relatives were judged significantly less acceptable than pied-piping or stranding relatives on both the online and offline tasks, and took twice as long to respond to during the online task. This leads Radford, Felser and Boxell to conclude that the types of gapless relative which they tested are ‘not licensed by the grammar of present day English’ (2012: 417) – i.e. that they are ungrammatical structures which violate the Recoverability Condition (8) and represent sporadic processing errors. Consequently, unlike preposition doubling (which is productive in some structures in some language varieties),32 preposition omission is not productive in any language variety that I know of, but rather remains a relatively rare phenomenon (consistent with it being a sporadic processing error). As for the significantly longer response times observed for gapless relatives compared to prepositional relatives (irrespective of whether they involve stranding or pied-piping of the preposition), this is likely to reflect the additional processing effort required to attempt to recover the missing preposition. However, a brief observation is in order about Radford, Felser and Boxell’s research. This relates to the choice of the 24 test sentences which they used, a representative sample of which is given below: (109)
32
a. The judge didn’t like the tone (in) which the teenage defendant spoke to her (in) b. The reporter commented on the predicament (in) which Newcastle’s new manager unexpectedly found himself (in) c. A secret affair came to light (for) which the foreign secretary later apologised profusely (for) d. The new company offered alarm systems [(on) which most customers felt they could rely (on)]
As noted in §3.6, preposition doubling is grammaticalised in North Saxon (Fleischer 2002), Swiss German (Glaser & Frey 2007), Alemannic (Brandner 2008), Flemish (Aelbrecht & den Dikken 2011, 2013), Icelandic (Jónsson 2008), and Norwegian and Swedish (Barbiers 2008).
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4.5 Processing Analyses
239
As these examples illustrate, Radford, Felser and Boxell tested relative clauses that involve using which to relativise the object of an obligatory preposition. Thus, since Radford, Felser and Boxell were testing inherently prepositional relatives, it is scarcely surprising that such structures were judged unacceptable without the preposition. A second factor that may have played some role is that all their test sentences involved use of the relativiser which. If colloquial English does indeed license a silent spellout for prepositions whose complements are relativised (as in the Ghosting account of Collins & Radford 2015), we might expect this to show up mainly in that and zero-relatives, since wh-less relatives are more frequent than whrelatives in (non-appositive) relatives in colloquial English.33 Moreover, counting examples in my own data of finite relative restrictive/kind relative clauses which could plausibly be taken to involve relativisation of the object of a silent preposition revealed 105 wh-less relatives (77 that relatives and 28 zero-relatives), compared to just 20 wh-relatives (12 with which and 8 with who). Thus, in retrospect, it might have been better to include gapless that (and perhaps zero-relatives) among the test sentences, though clearly this introduces another variable. Having looked at Radford, Felser and Boxell’s experimental study of prepositional gapless relatives (i.e. those which involve relativising the complement of a silent preposition), I now turn to look at a recent study of non-prepositional gapless which-appositives undertaken by Burke (2017). She used three groups of linguistics students at an Australian university as subjects. Participants were presented with audio recordings of test sentences, and then asked to rate them on a 5-point scale (where 5 is the highest score and denotes ‘completely acceptable’, 4 denotes ‘relatively acceptable’ and so on). In addition, two of the three groups were asked to say whether they would use the construction in everyday conversation (yes or no). Participants were tested on the following set of sentences containing a gapless appositive which-clause (modelled on sentences reported in the research literature):34
33
34
Recall the observation (cited in §1.5) by Biber et al. (1999: 612) that ‘that and zero have a more colloquial flavor and are preferred in conversation’ whereas wh-words are ‘considered more literate and appropriate to careful language’. Note, however, that (110b) could be a prepositional gapless relative (with omission of partitive of after one), or even a resumptive relative, with one being a resumptive pronoun. Likewise, (110e) could be a resumptive relative, with which being directly merged on the edge of RELP and reprised by the locative resumptive there.
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240 Gapless Relatives (110)
a. She was in the hospital on Australia Day, which she had glandular fever at the time, and they said she had post-natal depression b. I’m gonna have somewhere there at the open house, just so books aren’t stolen, which I think one was taken last year c. She gained half a kilo, which they were predicting she’d gain ten kilos d. And she decided to move out, which I think she’s crazy e. I’m taking them to Kangaroo Ground, which hopefully they won’t have too much culture shock over there f. And you get a side dish with it, which I had a salad
Burke reports that (110a) was rated far more acceptable and usable than any of the other test sentences, with 53.2% of participants in one group giving it a 4 or 5 rating, and 40% of participants in another group saying they would use it. By contrast, (110b–110f) received much lower acceptability and usability ratings. Burke argues that this difference is attributable to the different status of which in each of the sentences. More specifically, she argues that which in (110a) functions as a ‘topic marker’, whereas in other sentences it has a different function – e.g. she claims it has a causal function (like the conjunction because) in (110b), and a concessive function (like the conjunction although) in (110c). Her results suggest that there are a substantial number of people who accept (and say they would use) which in non-prepositional gapless relatives when it functions as a relative pronoun with a topical interpretation (paraphrasable as ‘about which I would comment that’). In this connection, it is worth noting that I argued in Chapter 2 that relative pronouns in resumptive relative clauses have much the same topic interpretation, so we would expect resumptive relatives and gapless appositive relatives like (110a) to have similar acceptability ratings. By contrast, the fact that there are very few people who accept (and say they would use) which in gapless relatives when it functions like a conjunction such as although/because might suggest that comparatively few speakers at present have reanalysed gapless appositive which as a conjunction. An interesting question which arises from the above discussion is why gapless appositives like (110a) don’t attract even higher acceptability/usability scores. One possibility is that some participants may implicitly adopt a prescriptive attitude which prefers/requires the relation between a relative clause and its antecedent to be explicit (i.e. syntactically encoded, e.g. by the use of an overt preposition) rather than implicit (i.e. determined by pragmatic inferencing), with gapless relatives being treated as sloppy because of the lack of any explicit grammatical link between the relative clause and its antecedent.
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4.5 Processing Analyses
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In this connection, it is interesting to note that Burke (2017: 383) reports that some of her participants remarked that (110e) sounded ‘uneducated’ or ‘bogan’.35 A clue to this may lie in the following remarks made by Burke (2017: 380) about problems which participants had with test sentences: Students frequently identified length as a problematic area of the sentence, describing it as ‘too long a sentence to be acceptable’ or ‘too long to use in everyday conversation’. Respondents also detailed how this could result in confusion: one student stated that the sentence was ‘quite hard to follow, a lot of info in a one sentence’, another how it was easy to ‘lose grammar and sense’.
A plausible interpretation of what is going on here is that participants are having problems in parsing the sentences for the following reason. Once they have identified which as a relative pronoun, their primary parsing strategy is to search for a gap or resumptive pronoun in the sentence that which can be associated with. When they come to the end of the sentence (particularly a long one) and have not found an appropriate gap or resumptive, they either discard the sentence as unacceptable or (if they have sufficient memory resources) attempt to reparse the sentence in some other way (e.g. with which parsed as the complement of a silent preposition which has been omitted as the result of a production error, or with which parsed as a topic marker or conjunction, or with the sentence parsed as a mis-production of a filler–gap relative).36 To summarise: in this section, I have considered the possibility that gapless appositives may arise as the result of a processing error of some kind (e.g. a memory lapse or blend). I noted that research by Radford, Felser and Boxell (2012) leads to the conclusion that prepositional gapless appositives (i.e. the gapless counterparts of appositive clauses which obligatorily require use of a preposition) are indeed processing errors, since they were rated as unacceptable in both online and offline tasks, and I know of no languages or language varieties which grammaticalise this kind of structure. However, I also noted that research by Burke (2017) on prepositionless gapless appositives showed that a substantial number of participants in one of her test groups found the 35
36
The Wikipedia entry for ‘bogan’ says that it is ‘Australian slang for a person whose speech, clothing, attitude and behaviour are considered unrefined or unsophisticated’. For example, Burke (2017: 383) reports that many participants reformulated the gapless relative clause in (110d) as the filler–gap relative which I think ― is crazy. Furthermore, one commented in relation to (110f) that ‘It’s missing for or as’ (Burke 2017: 381), suggesting that the individual concerned had tried to parse the relative clause as involving relativisation of the complement of a silent preposition.
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242 Gapless Relatives topical use of which grammatical and said they would use it, suggesting that this use has become grammaticalised for many speakers – and indeed this is not surprising, given that I argued in §2.7 that which can also have a topical interpretation (paraphrasable as ‘about which I would comment that’) in resumptive relatives. 4.6
Summary
I began this chapter by noting in §4.1 that gapless relatives have been discussed in a number of works dating back (at least) to the 1970s. I reported that a number of linguists have argued that they involve relativisation of the object of a preposition which is present in the syntax but receives a silent spellout at PF. I outlined one variant of this analysis in §4.2 in which the silent preposition is stranded, and another in §4.3 in which it is pied-piped. However, I argued that both the stranding and the pied-piping variants of the silent preposition analysis give rise to constraint violations, and fail to provide a plausible account of gapless relatives which have no straightforward prepositional paraphrase. In §4.4, I proposed an alternative (prepositionless) analysis of gapless relatives, under which the relation between the relative clause and its antecedent is not explicit (i.e. grammatically encoded by the use of a preposition) but rather implicit (i.e. determined by pragmatic inferencing). I noted, however, that while such an analysis will handle non-prepositional relatives (i.e. those whose nonrelative counterparts do not require a preposition), it cannot be extended to inherently prepositional relatives (i.e. those whose non-relative counterparts require the use of a preposition). In §4.5, I explored the possibility that gapless relatives may arise as the result of a processing error stemming from a memory lapse or blend. I noted experimental results from Radford, Felser and Boxell (2012) reporting that inherently prepositional gapless relatives are judged unacceptable and take a long time to process, and thus are likely to be the result of a processing error. However, I also noted experimental results from Burke (2017) reporting that non-prepositional gapless relatives are acceptable to many speakers where the relative pronoun has a topical interpretation, suggesting that this use has become grammaticalised for the relevant speakers (and I drew parallels with the resumptive relatives discussed in Chapter 2, which I argued to involve a parallel topical use of relative pronouns).
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Epilogue
This book has set out to investigate three types of non-canonical relative clause found in colloquial English (resumptive relatives in Chapter 2, preposition doubling and mismatching relatives in Chapter 3, and gapless relatives in Chapter 4), and to compare these with the canonical relatives found in standard varieties and registers of English (described in Chapter 1). I have argued that non-canonical relatives arise from two different sources. Some represent licit syntactic structures which have parallels in other domains: for example, resumptive relatives and nonprepositional gapless relatives have a syntactic structure which has much in common with topic clauses; and preposition doubling structures are judged acceptable and have grammatical counterparts in other languages (and in other types of doubling structure). Other types of non-canonical relative, however, represent processing errors: these include preposition mismatching and missing preposition relatives, which are both sporadic in occurrence, judged unacceptable, and not grammaticalised in any language variety that I am aware of. In addition to achieving the descriptive aims outlined above, I hope the book has achieved the following broader aims: • dispelling the prescriptive myth that colloquial English utilises substandard structures characterised by a sloppy form of language that has no proper structure and is thus not worthy of the attention of serious scholars • showing how supposedly sloppy structures in which, for example, relative pronouns are seemingly unlinked to their associated clauses actually involve a form of pragmatic linking which is found in other languages (e.g. Chinese, Japanese and Thai) • highlighting the richness of non-standard English, illustrating this in terms of extensive novel authentic data sourced mainly from live, unscripted radio and TV broadcasts 243
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244 Epilogue • adding to awareness of the range and nature of non-standard, nondialectal variation in colloquial English • showing that the range of syntactic structures found in colloquial English can profitably be studied and understood from a formal syntactic perspective • contributing to understanding the cartography of the clause periphery, employing (what in terms of cartographic work is) a novel source of data from authentic examples of spoken English • showing how a usage-based approach to linguistic analysis can provide a fertile additional source of data which complements other (e.g. introspective and experimental) approaches Finally, let me add that I hope that you have learned as much from the fascinating range of structures in the book as I have!
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Glossary and Abbreviations
This glossary contains a list of technical terms used in the book, excluding those which should be familiar to readers from introductions to linguistics like Radford et al. (2009). Bold print is used to highlight technical terms and to cross-refer to entries elsewhere in the glossary (although in example sentences it is sometimes used to highlight key words or phrases). Abbreviations used here are: ch. 2 = Chapter 2; §1.6 = Chapter 1 Section 6. A-bar movement: A type of movement operation whereby some constituent moves to a position within the clause periphery, like Wh-Movement in a sentence such as (i), or Topic Movement in a sentence such as (ii): (i) Where are you going ―? (ii) Garlic, I can’t stand ―
Adjunct: A term used is to denote an optional constituent typically used to specify e.g. the time, place or manner in which an event takes place. Thus, in sentences such as: (i) John met Mary in Starbucks yesterday afternoon (ii) John went home because he was tired
the phrases in Starbucks and yesterday afternoon are adjuncts in (i), and the clause because he was tired is an adjunct in (ii). Adjunction: An operation by which one constituent is attached to another (e.g. to adjoined to going to form gonna). Adverbial noun: This is a noun (like Tuesday in the example below) which is used in a context where we might otherwise expect to find an adverb like shortly: (i) I’ll see you Tuesday
On one view, such nouns are used as the complement of a silent preposition, so that (i) has the fuller structure below (where angle brackets indicate 245
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246 Glossary and Abbreviations that the preposition is present in the syntax but is not pronounced in the phonology): (ii) I’ll see you Tuesday
Anaphor: This is an expression (like himself) which cannot have independent reference, but which must take its reference from an appropriate antecedent (i.e. expression which it refers to) within the same phrase or sentence. Hence, while we can say John is deluding himself (where himself refers back to John), we cannot say *For himself to have to wait would be unthinkable, since the anaphor himself here has no antecedent. A traditional distinction is drawn between reflexive anaphors (i.e. self/selves forms like myself/ourselves/yourself/ yourselves/himself/herself/itself/themselves) and the reciprocal anaphors each other/one another (as in They help each other/one another). Antecedent: When a pronoun refers back to some other constituent, the constituent which it refers back to is termed its antecedent. For example, in sentences like: (i) Politicians, very few people have faith in them (ii) There are politicians who people have little faith in
the pronouns them/who refer back to politicians, and hence politicians is the antecedent of them/who here. Antecedent Raising is an operation whereby the antecedent of a relative clause originates inside the relative clause and then raises to a position outside it: see the discussion of (73–76) in §1.6. Antilocality Constraint: A constraint which (in the words of Boeckx 2007: 110) specifies that ‘Movement internal to a projection counts as too local, and is banned’. One effect of the constraint is to ban movement from the complement position to the specifier position internally within a given phrase/projection. A-position: A non-peripheral position (i.e. one not in the clause periphery) which an argument (e.g. a subject or object) occupies if it doesn’t undergo movement, or a position which can trigger agreement (e.g. a position in which a subject agrees with an auxiliary or verb), or a position from which an antecedent can bind an anaphor. So, for example, John occupies an A-position in a sentence like: (i) I think that John is taking himself too seriously
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This is because John occupies a non-peripheral position (below the complementiser that), it agrees with the auxiliary is, and it binds the reflexive anaphor himself. Argument: In a sentence like (i) John hit Fred
the overall sentence is said to be a proposition (a term used to describe the semantic content of a clause), and to consist of the predicate hit and its two arguments John and Fred. The two arguments represent the two participants in the act of hitting, and the predicate (= hit) describes the activity in which they are engaged. ARTP: An abbreviation of article phrase. Some linguists take a phrase like a book or the book to be an ARTP/article phrase which is headed by the indefinite article/ART a or the definite article the. Others treat articles as a type of determiner (or perhaps a type of quantifier in the case of a). Asymmetric c-command: See C-command Base-generated: To say that a constituent is base-generated in a particular position is to say that it originates in that position. Bind/Binding: In a sentence such as John blamed himself, the reflexive anaphor himself is bound by John in the sense that the referential properties of himself are determined by John (so that the two refer to the same individual). Principle A of Binding Theory specifies that an anaphor (e.g. himself) must be locally bound (e.g. the closest TP containing the anaphor must contain an appropriate antecedent which c-commands the anaphor). Principle B specifies that a pronominal (i.e. a non-anaphoric pronoun like him) cannot be coreferential to any constituent which c-commands it within the closest TP containing the pronominal. Principle C specifies that an R-expression (i.e. a referential noun expression like the president) cannot be coreferential to any constituent c-commanding it. Blend: A blend is a structure formed by combining aspects/parts of one structure with those of another. For example, Fay (1981: 718) argues that a preposition doubling sentence like: (i) Would you turn on the light on?
represents a blend between the sentences in (ii) and (iii) below:
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248 Glossary and Abbreviations (ii) Would you turn on the light? (iii) Would you turn the light on?
The blend arises because the speaker combines/splices the first part of the structure in (i) with the second part of the structure in (ii). C: Abbreviation of Complementiser. Canonical: A canonical structure is one which occurs in standard varieties and registers of English. A non-canonical structure is one which does not occur in standard varieties or registers, but is restricted to use in non-standard varieties or special registers. Cartography/Cartographic: The cartographic model of syntax (devised by Luigi Rizzi and his research associates: see fnn. 8 and 9 in ch. 1) is so called because it aims to devise a detailed ‘map’ of the internal structure of clauses which specifies the precise positions occupied by different types of constituent within clauses. Under this approach, each different type of constituent in the clause periphery occupies a position on the edge of a dedicated functional projection (i.e. one dedicated to housing a particular kind of constituent). So, for example, topics are positioned on the edge of a topic projection/TOPP, focused constituents on the edge of a focus projection/FOCP, clause-modifying constituents on the edge of a modifier projection/MODP, and so on. See §1.3 for more detailed discussion. Case Constraint: A constraint invoked by Collins & Radford (2015: 22) which specifies that a caseless constituent cannot occur in a case position (i.e. in a position where it is within the domain of a case assigner). Case Filter: A constraint proposed by Chomsky (1981) to the effect that any structure containing a nominal or pronominal constituent which does not carry case is filtered out as ill-formed at PF. C-command: In a structure containing two different constituents X and Y, X c-commands Y if X is independent of Y (in the sense that neither contains the other), and if the mother of X contains Y. A constituent X asymmetrically c-commands another constituent Y if X c-commands Y but Y does not c-command X. CED: Abbreviation of Constraint on Extraction Domains. See Extraction. CFC: Abbreviation of Criterial Freezing Condition. See Criterial freezing/ position.
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Cleft sentence: This is a type of structure such as: (i) It was syntax that he enjoyed most
where syntax is said to occupy focus position within the cleft sentence. In (i), the focused constituent is followed by the complementiser that, whereas in (ii) below it is followed by the wh-pronoun which: (ii) It was syntax which he enjoyed most
Accordingly, a structure like (ii) is referred to as a wh-cleft, and one like (i) as a non-wh cleft. COMP/Comp-/Complementiser: The term complementiser (mostly abbreviated to C, but sometimes to COMP) denotes a particular category of clause-introducing word such as that/if/whether/for used to introduce complement clauses like those bracketed below: (i) I think [that you should apologize] (ii) I don’t know [if/whether she will agree] (iii) They’re keen [ for you to show up]
Some complementisers can also be used to introduce relative clauses like those bracketed below: (iv) This is is a matter [that someone else should deal with] (v) This is a matter [ for someone else to deal with]
In work from the 1980s on, clauses introduced by a complementiser (like those in i–v above) were taken to have the status of CP/complementiser phrase constituents. In a different use, the notation comp-XP (or equivalently comp-X) denotes the complement of XP/X. Complete clause: A non-defective/non-truncated clause which contains a FORCEP projection and can also contain a range of other peripheral projections including a topic projection/TOPP and/or a focus projection/FOCP. COMP-Trace Filter: A constraint which rules out superficial (PF) structures like (i) below in which an overt complementiser is immediately followed by a trace (i.e. a gap arising from movement): (i) *Who did he allege [that ― had stolen the documents]?
Here, the filter is violated because the complementiser that is followed by a trace of who (i.e. by a gap left behnd by movement of who).
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250 Glossary and Abbreviations Constraint on Extraction Domains: See Extract/Extraction. Coordinate Structure Constraint: A constraint specifying that no constituent can be extracted out of a coordinate structure. Thus, in a sentence containing a coordinate structure like that bracketed below: (i) They invited [Harry and William] to Sandringham
the whole coordinate structure can be preposed for emphasis, as in: (ii) Harry and William, they invited to Sandringham
but nothing can be extracted out of the bracketed structure in (i). So, for example, extracting William on his own leads to the ungrammaticality in: (iii) *William, they invited [Harry and ―] to Sandringham
Copy: The Copy Theory of Movement is a theory developed by Chomsky which maintains that each time a constituent moves, it leaves behind a full copy of itself. Usually, only the highest of these copies is given an overt spellout (i.e. pronounced), with lower copies being silent (i.e. unpronounced). Corpus: A corpus is a set of authentic spoken or written language data collected in order to investigate some phenomenon (or set of phenomena). See the Prologue (esp. fn. 1) on the usefulness (and potential pitfalls of) corpus data. CP: Abbreviation of complementiser phrase. See Complementiser. Criterial freezing/position: In cartographic work, each type of constituent in the clause periphery has a criterial position within a dedicated projection (i.e. within a projection which is dedicated to housing the relevant kind of constituent). Thus, the criterial position for a peripheral topic is on the edge of TOPP, the criterial position for a peripheral focused constituent is on the edge of FOCP, the criterial position for a relative pronoun is on the edge of RELP, and so on. The Criterial Freezing Condition is a constraint which specifies that any constituent which occupies its criterial position is frozen in place, and cannot move elsewhere. See §1.4. D: Determiner DCA: Default case assignment: see Default. Declarative: See Force. Default: A default value or property is one which obtains if all else fails (i.e. if other conditions are not satisfied). For example, saying that a finite clause is
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Glossary and Abbreviations
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interpreted as declarative in force (i.e. as having the force of a statement) by default is to say that a finite clause is interpreted as declarative unless it is marked as having some other force (e.g. marked as a yes-no question by rising intonation, or marked as a wh-question by the presence of an interrogative word like who, or marked as an imperative by the presence of an adverb like please, etc.): see ch. 1, fn. 13. Default case is the case assigned by default to a constituent which does not fall within the domain of any case assigner. The default case in English is accusative, and so we use the accusative form me in a dialogue like Who wants ice-cream? – Me! DFCF: Abbreviation of Doubly Filled COMP Filter. Discourse-linked: In a sentence such as (i) Which do you prefer?
the interrogative pronoun which is discourse-linked in the sense that which is interpreted as referring to some entity in the discourse domain/context. For example, if two women have been comparing two dresses and one asks ‘Which do you prefer’, which will be interpreted as meaning ‘which of these two dresses?’ Dislocated: A dislocated constituent is one set off in a separate intonation group from the rest of the sentence (marked in the spelling by a comma), as with the italicised topic below: (i) Relative clauses, nobody really understands them
In this case, the dislocated topic constituent is reprised/picked up by the resumptive pronoun them at the end of the sentence. Dislocated constituents are often positioned at the beginning of a sentence (as above), but can sometimes be at the end (as below): (ii) Nobody really understands them, relative clauses.
Domain: The domain of a constituent is (in informal terms) its sphere of influence. For example, in the sentence below: (i) Nobody would ever believe you
the adverb ever is a polarity item in the sense that it is restricted to occurring within the domain of a negative or interrogative constituent: hence, ever falls within the domain of the negative pronoun nobody (and the sentence becomes ungrammatical if nobody is replaced by somebody). In technical terms, domain
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252 Glossary and Abbreviations is defined in terms of the relation c-command: X falls within the domain of Y if Y c-commands X (and if the two are sufficiently close together). Double/Doubling: Doubling is a phenomenon whereby two copies of the same word or phrase appear in a context where only one copy would otherwise be expected to occur (e.g. where only one copy would occur in standard varieties). For example, the relative clause bracketed in: (i) The world [in which we live in] is constantly changing
contains an instance of preposition doubling (= of a preposition which is doubled), in that one copy of the preposition in appears at the beginning of the relative clause and another at the end of it. Doubly Filled COMP Filter/structure: The Doubly Filled COMP Filter is a constraint specifying that any superficial (PF) structure containing an overt complementiser with an overt specifier is filtered out as ill-formed: see §1.4. A doubly-filled COMP structure is one in which an overt complementiser has an overt specifier – as in the (non-standard) structure bracketed below: (i) I have no idea [CP why [C that] he did it]
In standard varieties, (i) would be ungrammatical by virtue of violating the Doubly Filled COMP Filter because the complementiser that has the specifier why. DP: Determiner phrase. In work prior to the mid-1980s, a structure such as the king of Utopia was taken to be a noun phrase/NP. In more recent work, such expressions are taken to be Determiner Phrases/DPs comprising the head determiner the and a noun phrase/NP complement king of Utopia. Economy: It is widely assumed that syntactic derivations are governed by an Economy Principle which requires them to be as economical as possible. Simplifying somewhat, this means that structures should contain as few words and as little structure as possible. Edge: The edge of a phrase/projection comprises its head and any specifier that it has, but excludes its complement. So, for example in a structure like that bracketed below: (i) He fell [PP right [P down] [DP [D the] [NP stairs]]]
the edge of PP comprises the head preposition down and its specifier right, but excludes its DP complement the stairs. The edge of DP in turn comprises only
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Glossary and Abbreviations
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the head determiner the (because the has no specifier) and excludes its NP complement stairs. An edge feature is a feature on the head of a phrase/ projection which allows it to attract some other constituent to move to the edge of the relevant projection. The Edge Constraint (invoked by Collins & Radford 2015) posits that the head and specifier of a phase cannot both be spelled out overtly at PF (where they take phases to include CP, DP, vP and PP): this is in effect a generalized version of the Doubly Filled COMP Filter proposed by Koopman (2000). Exclamative: See Force. Extract/Extraction: Extract(ion) is another term for move(ment), and so denotes an operation by which one constituent is moved out of another. The Constraint on Extraction Domains/CED specifies that extraction is only possible out of a complement, not out of a specifier or adjunct: it dates back to work by Cattell (1976), Cinque (1978) and Huang (1982). Factive: A clause is factive if it is presupposed to be factual/true. For example, in a sentence such as: (i) I had never believed [that she was dead]
the bracketed complement clause is non-factive, and hence the speaker can subsequently go on and deny that it is true (e.g. I had never believed that she was dead, and sure enough it subsequently turned out that she wasn’t). By contrast, the bracketed complement clause in: (ii) I hadn’t known [that she was dead]
is indeed factive, and so it is anomalous/contradictory to say ‘I hadn’t known that she was dead, and indeed it subsequently turned out that she wasn’t’. FARK: This book is mainly concerned with finite appositive, restrictive and kind relatives, and the abbreviation ‘FARK relatives’ is used in ch. 1 to denote them. Filler: On filler–gap structures, see Gap. FIN/FINP: FIN denotes a finiteness marker – i.e. an item which serves to mark a clause as finite or non-finite. So, for example, in an infinitival relative clause like that bracketed below: (i) Have you got any letters [ for me to sign]?
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254 Glossary and Abbreviations the complementiser for (by virtue of introducing a non-finite clause containing infinitival to) is a FIN constituent (positioned in front of the subject me), and the phrase immediately containing it is a FINP. On one view, FIN is also the position occupied by inverted auxiliaries in sentences like: (ii) Where, if you don’t mine me asking, are you going?
Finite: The term finite clause denotes (a clause containing) a finite auxiliary or non-auxiliary verb – i.e. one which carries tense/mood/agreement properties, and can have a nominative subject like I/we/he/she/they. For example, compare the two bracketed clauses in: (i) I wonder [if anyone annoyed her] (ii) Don’t let [anyone annoy her]
The bracketed clause and the verb annoyed in (i) are finite because the verb is a past tense form, and can have a nominative subject (e.g. anyone can be replaced by they). By contrast, the bracketed clause and the verb annoy are non-finite in (ii) because annoy is a tenseless infinitive form, and the subject anyone cannot be replaced by a nominative pronoun like they (only by an accusative pronoun like them). FOC/FOCP/Focus: A constituent is said to be focused if it serves to introduce new information. One way of focusing a constituent is to move it to the front of the relevant clause. Thus, in the dialogue below, the two italicised fronted constituents are said to be focused: speaker a: What are the subjects you enjoy most and least? speaker b: Syntax I enjoy most. Phonetics I enjoy least In cartographic analyses, preposed focused expressions are taken to be positioned on the edge of a FOCP/focus phrase projection in the clause periphery which is headed by an abstract FOC/focus particle. FORCE/FORCEP: Within the cartographic model of syntax, all non-defective clauses are taken to be FORCEP/force phrase constituents with a FORCE head that serves to mark the illocutionary force of the relevant clause (i.e. to tell us what type of clause it is). On this view, the bracketed clause in (i) below: (i) He admitted [FORCEP that he was mistaken]
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is a FORCEP constituent headed by the complementiser that, which marks the clause as declarative in force (i.e. as having the force of a statement). Other clauses like those bracketed below have a different type of force: (ii) I didn’t know [whether she would agree] (iii) I have to say [what a great game it was!] (iv) He said: [Don’t touch it!]
The bracketed clause is interrogative in force (= has the force of a question) in (ii), exclamative in force (= has the force of an exclamation) in (iii), and imperative in force (= has the force of an order) in (iv). More contentious to classify are let-clauses like that bracketed below: (v) He said: [Let’s have a drink to celebrate!]
Some linguists take such clauses to be hortative in force (in that they exhort someone to do something), whereas others treat them as imperative. On the claim that certain types of relative clause can be declarative, interrogative, exclamative, imperative, or hortative in force, see §1.3. Freezing Principle: A principle devised by Wexler and Culicover (1980: 119), which freezes the elements of a moved constituent in place and so bars material from being extracted out of any constituent which has undergone movement. For example, suppose we move the bracketed phrase in (i) below from the gap position to a position immediately following that: (i) The FBI found that that [no trace of their DNA] did they leave behind ―
If we then try and move their DNA out of the bracketed phrase, we will end up with the ungrammatical outcome below: (ii) *Their DNA, the FBI found that [no trace of ―] did they leave behind ―
The ungrammaticality results from violation of the Freezing Principle, because their DNA has been extracted out a phrase (no trace of their DNA) which has itself undergone movement. Functional head: Functional heads are constituents like C, T, D which mark grammatical properties (like force, tense, definiteness, etc.). Gap: An empty position (or, metaphorically, a ‘hole’) in a given structure which results from a constituent undergoing ellipsis (as with the second occurrence of ate in John ate an apple and Mary ate a pear) or movement
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256 Glossary and Abbreviations (as with where in Where has he gone where?). In this book, I use the notation ― to mark a gap, and I employ the term gap relatives to denote relative clauses like that bracketed below which contain a gap: (i) He is someone [who we all admire ―]
Filler–gap structures are those in which a gap is associated with a filler elsewhere in (usually at the beginning of) the relevant structure. For example, in a structure such as: (i) Cabbage and garlic, I really can’t stand ―
the italicised fronted phrase cabbage and garlic is the filler associated with the gap (―), in the sense that the filler is interpreted in the same way as if it occupied the gap position, so that (i) has essentially the same meaning as: (ii) I really can’t stand cabbage and garlic
Gapless: A gapless relative clause is one which seemingly contains no gap. See §4.1. Head: The head (constituent) of a phrase or clause is the key word which determines the syntactic and semantic properties of the phrase/ clause. So, in a phrase such as fond of fast food, the head of the phrase is the adjective fond, and consequently the phrase is an adjectival phrase (and hence can occupy typical positions associated with adjectival expressions – e.g. as the complement of is in He is fond of fast food). In such a case, we can say that the adjective fond occupies head-AP (i.e. the head position of AP). Head Movement: An operation which moves a word from one head position to another (e.g. an operation like Auxiliary Inversion which moves an auxiliary from the head T position of TP into the head C position of CP (or, in cartographic terms, into the head FIN position of FINP). Hortative: See Force. Hypercorrection: A phenomenon whereby an individual makes an inappropriate correction to an item or structure which they (wrongly) perceive to be incorrect. For example, the letter h is standardly spelled as aitch (deriving from Old French ache). However, people aware of the tendency for h to be dropped in colloquial speech (as with him in ‘I met (h)im in the pub’) wrongly imagine that the word aitch must begin with h and hence (by hypercorrection) write/pronounce it as haitch.
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Inaccessibility Hypothesis: The hypothesis (discussed in §2.3) that resumptives are only used to relativise constituents which are inaccessible in the sense that they are difficult to relativise with a gap relative because this would give rise to syntactic problems (e.g. violation of one or more movement constraints) or processing difficulties (in creating a longdistance dependency). Inclusiveness Condition: A grammatical principle proposed by Chomsky (2001: 2) which ‘bars introduction of new elements (features) in the course of a derivation’. See the related No Tampering Condition. INF: An abbreviation of ‘infinitive’ In situ: To say that a constituent is merged in situ (i.e. ‘in place’) means that it originates in the superficial position that it occupies, and does not move there from anywhere else. So, for example, under one analysis, a dislocated topic like that italicised below: (i) Syntax, few people know what to make of it
originates in the position which it occupies in (i), on the edge of a TOPP/topic phrase projection (and does not, for example, originate as the complement of the preposition of and from there move into the clause periphery). INT/INTP: INT denotes an interrogative head, and INTP an interrogative phrase/projection. INTP is taken by some cartographers to be the projection which houses interrogative complementisers like if/whether, and also the expression how come. Interpretable: A feature is (semantically) interpretable if it has semantic content, and uninterpretable if it has no semantic content (but rather simply serves a phonological or morphological function). By way of illustration, consider the pronoun he. This has interpretable (third) person, (singular) number and (masculine) gender features, but also carries an uninterpretable (nominative) case feature. We can see that the case feature on he (and on other pronouns) is uninterpretable by comparing the two sentences below: (i) I consider that [he is an ideal candidate for the job] (ii) I consider [him to be an ideal candidate for the job]
Although the form of the italicised pronoun changes between these two examples (it has the nominative case form he in the first example and the accusative case form him in the second), its meaning doesn’t change (i.e. in both cases it
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258 Glossary and Abbreviations denotes a male who is neither the speaker not the person being addressed). But contrast, if we replace he/him by its feminine gender counterpart she/her, the meaning changes (in that the pronoun then denotes a female). This tells us that gender is an interpretable feature, but case is a purely uninterpretable/formal feature. Interrogative: See Force. Intervention Constraint: A constraint which (in the words of Abels 2012: 247) specifies that ‘Likes cannot cross likes’. This constraint will (for example) prevent movement of one negative constituent across another, and thus prevents nothing in (i) below from crossing never to derive (ii): (i) I could never do nothing if I saw someone in danger (ii) *Nothing could I never do if I saw someone in danger
Intrusive: In the way in which this term is used in the present book, a preposition is said to be intrusive (or spurious) if it occurs in a context where standard varieties of English would not use it. For example, in a (non-standard) relative clause like that below: (i) This is something [in which we talked about]
the preposition in is intrusive in the sense that it would not be used in standard varieties of English (since which is the complement of about) and thus seemingly has no rationale. See §3.4. Irrealis: An infinitive clause like that italicised in (i) below or a subjunctive clause like that bracketed in (ii): (i) They would prefer [(for) him to abstain] (ii) They would prefer [that he abstain]
is said to denote an irrealis (a Latin word meaning ‘unreal’) event in the sense that the act of abstention is a hypothetical event which has not yet happened and may never happen. ISL: Intervening string length – i.e. the number of words intervening between two constituents (e.g. between a relative pronoun and a stranded preposition that it serves as the complement of). Island: A structure out of which no subpart can be extracted by any movement operation. The islandhood metaphor was devised by Ross (1967), who observed that a number of types of structures are islands (hence barriers to
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extraction), including subjects, adjuncts, wh-clauses and coordinate structures. So, for example in a sentence like: (i) People run the risk of dying [if they eat deadly nightshade]
the bracketed if-clause is an adjunct clause, and since adjuncts are islands, extracting deadly nightshade out of it leads to the ungrammaticality we find in (ii) below: (ii) *Deadly nightshade, people run the risk of dying [if they eat ―]
An island is said to be a strong island if it doesn’t allow any kind of constituent to be extracted out of it (and if extraction induces severe ungrammaticality), and a weak island if it allows some types of constituent (but not others) to be extracted out of it (and if extraction induces milder ungrammaticality). In a phrase like ‘This leads to an island violation’, the term island violation means ‘violation of a constraint against extracting constituents out of a particular kind of island’. Kind(-defining) relatives: See Relative clause/pronoun. LBC/Left Branch Condition: A constraint devised by Ross (1967) which in effect says that no left branch (i.e. preceding) modifier can be separated from a noun it modifies. Thus, LBC will prevent whose from being extracted out of the nominal whose car in a structure such as (i) below, because whose originates in the gap position within the bracketed nominal to the left of the noun car – i.e. whose originates as a left branch/preceding modifier of the noun car (as in whose car): (i) *Whose did he borrow [― car]?
Light constituent: An item which has relatively little grammatical or semantic content. For example, the noun thing in expressions like something/nothing/ everything is sometimes said to be a light noun. In more abstract analyses, pronouns like what/where/who are sometimes treated as incorporating an abstract (i.e. silent) light noun, so that what? is the spellout of WHAT THING, where? of WHAT PLACE, and who? of WHAT PERSON. Local/locality: In informal terms, local means ‘nearby’, and non-local means ‘distant’. A movement operation is said to be local when it moves a constituent from one position to another nearby position (e.g. in the same clause), and conversely it is said to be non-local when it moves a constituent from one position to another which is relatively far away (e.g. in a different clause). So, for example, in a sentence like:
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260 Glossary and Abbreviations (i) Which party are you confident that most people will vote for?
the Auxiliary Inversion operation which moves are from its original position immediately following you to a new position immediately preceding you is local, but the Wh-Movement operation that moves which party from the end of the vote-clause to the beginning of the confident clause is non-local (since it moves the wh-phrase out of one clause into another). On locality constraints, see Successive-cyclic. Matching analysis: Under the matching analysis of relative clauses outlined in §1.6, a relative pronoun like that italicised in the relative clause following the comma below: (i) I eventually retrieved the document, which I found I had left in the car
would modify a matching copy of the antecedent noun document, so that which would have the fuller structure which document. The copy of document that follows which would eventually be given a silent spellout at PF, and so be unpronounced. Thus, the relevant part of (i) would have the fuller structure (ii) below: (ii) . . . the document, which document I found I had left ― in the car
Maximal projection: See Projection. MOD/MODP: MOD denotes a modifier head, and MODP a modifier phrase/projection. MODP is a constituent in the clause periphery which houses clausal modifiers – e.g. adverbial phrases such as tomorrow afternoon or adverbial clauses like if it rains. On this view, the italicised constituents in the that-clauses below are housed in a MODP projection: (i) The forecasters say that tomorrow afternoon it might rain (ii) He says that if it rains he’ll stay at home
N: Noun Non-canonical: See Canonical. Non-local: See Local. No Tampering Condition: A constraint devised by Chomsky (2005, 2007, 2008, 2013) specifying that no syntactic operation can tamper with (i.e. change) any part of a structure other than the root.
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NP: Noun phrase One Feature One Head Principle: A principle devised by Cinque & Rizzi (2008) to the effect that each functional head in a structure carries only one interpretable feature. This means (for example) that no head in the clause periphery can simultaneously mark (e.g.) both force and focus: rather, force and focus each have to be marked on a separate head (force on a FORCE head, focus on a FOC head). See §1.3. Operator: A term used in syntax to denote an (e.g. interrogative, exclamative, relative or imperative) constituent whose semantic function is to convert a proposition into e.g. an interrogative, exclamative, relative or imperative clause. So, for example, a yes-no question like Have you eaten anything? can be analysed as containing a null/silent yes-no question operator which types the clause as a yes-no question and which triggers Auxiliary Inversion. P/PP: Abbreviation for preposition/prepositional phrase Peripheral/periphery: The (left) periphery of a clause is that part of the structure which precedes its subject. Thus in the clause bracketed below: (i) The police said [that the escaped convicts, on no account should any member of the public approach them]
the periphery comprises the italicised material preceding the underlined subject (namely, the complementiser that, the topic the escaped convicts, the focused negative phrase on no account, and the inverted auxiliary should). Under the cartographic approach, each of these constituents is positioned on the edge of a separate peripheral projection (e.g. the declarative force-marking complementiser that on the edge of FORCEP, the topic the escaped convicts on the edge of TOPP, the focused phrase on no account on the edge of FOCP, and the inverted finite auxiliary should on the edge of FINP. See §1.3. PF: An abbreviation for phonetic form. A PF representation is a representation of the phonetic form of an expression, and PF structure represents superficial structure. The PF component of a grammar is the (phonological) component of the grammar which converts the structures generated by the syntactic component of the grammar into PF representations, via a series of morphological and phonological operations. Phase: A phase is a constituent (like CP, DP, PP and vP) which is a barrier to extraction, in the sense that any constituent below (i.e. c-commanded by) the
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262 Glossary and Abbreviations head of the phase is inaccessible to (and hence cannot agree with or be attracted by) any constituent above (i.e. c-commanding) the phase. Phi-features: These are person/number/gender features that play a role in agreement and anaphora, as can be illustrated by: (i) Mary knows that she has let herself down
Here, the verb knows agrees in person and number with its subject Mary, and the auxiliary has with its subject she. In addition, the reflexive anaphor herself agrees in person, number and gender with its antecedent she, and the pronoun she likewise agrees in person, number and gender with its antecedent Mary. Pied-piping: A process by which a moved constituent drags one or more other constituents along with it when it moves. For example, if we compare the two sentences below: (i) Who were you talking to ―? (ii) To whom were you talking ―?
we can say that in both cases the pronoun who(m) moves to the front of the sentence from the gap position in which it originates, but that in the second sentence the preposition to is pied-piped along with the pronoun whom. See ch. 3, fn. 10. Polarity item: An item which is inherently negative/interrogative in polarity, in the sense that it is restricted to occurring within the scope of a negative/ interrogative constituent. For example, ever is a polarity item as we see from the following examples: (i) When will things ever change? (ii) I don’t think things will ever change (iii) *Things will ever change
Thus, ever can be used in (i) because it falls within the scope of interrogative when and in (ii) because it falls within the scope of negative don’t, but not in (iii) because there is no negative or interrogative constituent to license (i.e. allow) its use. Preposition doubling: See Doubling. Prepositional: A prepositional relative clause is one in which the relative pronoun introducing the clause is the object/complement of a preposition. For example, the bracketed relative clause in:
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(i) The man [who you were talking to] is my uncle
is a prepositional relative in the sense that the relative pronoun who is the complement/object of the preposition to. Prescriptive: The prescriptive approach to grammar sees the aim of grammar as being to prescribe norms for grammatical correctness, linguistic purity and literary excellence. Such an approach often vilifies colloquial structures as ‘sloppy’, or ‘grammatically incorrect’. Projection: To say that a phrase is a projection of some head is to say that the phrase carries properties which mirror those of its head word. For example, a phrase such as students of Linguistics is a projection of the head noun students (because it denotes types of student), and consequently is a plural noun phrase: equivalently, we can say that the noun students here projects into the noun phrase students of linguistics. A maximal projection is a constituent which is not contained within any larger constituent with the same head: in more traditional terms, it is a phrase. So, for example, in a sentence like ‘I’ve heard several accounts of what happened’, the italicised noun phrase accounts of what happened is a maximal projection, since it is a projection of the noun accounts but is not contained within any larger projection of the noun accounts (if we assume that several accounts of what happened is a quantifier phrase headed by the quantifier several). Quotative Island Constraint: A constraint which prevents a constituent from being extracted out of a direct speech quotation. This constraint will prevent what disease from being extracted out of the gap position inside the direct speech enclosed within inverted commas below: (i) *What disease did he say to himself: ‘I hope I don’t catch ―’
Recoverability Condition: A constraint (dating back to Chomsky 1964) which specifies that a constituent can only have a null spellout (e.g. be deleted) if its content is recoverable (e.g. from an appropriate antecedent). Recursion: A clause is said to involve recursion of a given projection/phrase XP if it contains one XP embedded inside another XP (with or without some other constituent intervening between the two). So, for example, a clause involves CP recursion if it contains one CP embedded inside another – as in the case of the structure below, where one bracketed CP headed by that is embedded inside another:
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264 Glossary and Abbreviations (i) He says [that if there is any more trouble [that he will call the police]]
Under Rizzi’s FINP recursion analysis sketched in §1.4, clauses can contain a FINP recursion structure of the form FINP+MODP+FINP, where a MODP is sandwiched between two FINP constituents. Register: A form/style of language used in specific situations (e.g. in online chatrooms, or diary entries, or legal documents, or sports commentaries, etc.). Accordingly, we can talk about a ‘chatroom register’ of English, or a ‘diary register’ etc. In this book, I have treated ‘colloquial English’ as a particular register of English. REL/RELP: Within (one implementation of) the cartographic approach to syntax, relative clauses have the status of RELP constituents (i.e. relative projections). RELP is headed by a relative complementiser like that/for/ø and has a relative wh-pronoun (or a silent counterpart WH) as its specifier – as below: (i) She is someone [RELP who [REL ø] I know quite well] (ii) I need to find something [RELP WH [REL for] her to do]
See §1.3. Relative clause/pronoun: In a sentence such as (i) That’s the film [which I saw]
the bracketed clause is said to be a relative clause because it ‘relates to’ (i.e. modifies) the noun film, and the pronoun which that introduces the clause is said to be a relative pronoun, and the noun film is its antecedent. Restrictive relative clauses serve the function of restricting the class of entities referred to by the antecedent to those that have the property described in the relative clause. For instance, in a sentence like: (ii) They are the people [who the police interviewed]
the bracketed restrictive relative clause restricts the class of people referred to in the sentence to those interviewed by the police. Kind(-defining) relative clauses serve to define a kind, and have an interpretation akin to that of such clauses. Thus in a sentence like: (iii) He’s someone [that gets into lots of fights]
the bracketed relative relative clause in (ii) is paraphrasable as ‘of such a kind that he gets into lots of fights’ (or less clumsily, the sentence can be
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paraphrased as ‘He’s the kind of person that gets into lots of fights’). Free relative clauses are so-called because they contain a free relative pronoun (i.e. one which doesn’t have any overt antecedent), like what in (iv) What you say is true
Appositive relative clauses generally serve as ‘parenthetical comments’ or ‘afterthoughts’ set off in a separate intonation group from the rest of the sentence, as with the bracketed clause in: (v) I spoke to my bank manager yesterday, [who was in a filthy mood]
Contact/zero-relative clauses are structures in which the edge of the relative clause contains no overt relativiser (e.g. no relative pronoun or relative complementiser), as with the (non-standard) bracketed relative clause in: (vi) There’s a farmer [sells vegetables in the village]
Infinitival relative clauses are clauses whose main verb is infinitival, like the verb be in the relative clause bracketed below (vii) It is important to find a way [(in which) to be at peace with oneself ]
Resumptive relative clauses are relative clauses which contain a resumptive pronoun or nominal (underlined below), as with the bracketed clause in (viii) He’s someone [that I don’t know anyone who trusts him/the bastard]
On differences between various types of relative clause, see §1.2. Relativiser: A word positioned at the beginning of a clause which identifies the relevant structure as a relative clause – e.g. the relative pronouns who/where and the complementisers that/for are relativisers introducing the bracketed relative clauses in sentences like: (i) This is the man [who bought the house [where we used to live]] (ii) This is the man [that was looking for something [ for his son to do]]
Wh-words like which/who/where/when/why are referred to as wh-relativisers, whereas by contrast complementisers like that/for are non-wh relativisers. See §1.5. Restrictive relative clause: See Relative clause. Resumptive: A pronoun (or noun expression) which reprises/refers back to a topic or relative pronoun, e.g.
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266 Glossary and Abbreviations (i) John, I can’t stand him/the bastard (ii) He is someone who, I can’t stand him/the bastard
In these sentences, him is a resumptive pronoun, and the bastard is a resumptive nominal; in (i), the resumptive refers back to the topic John, while in (ii) it refers back to the relative pronoun who. On resumptive relative clauses, see Relative clause. SD: Standard deviation Spec-/Specifier: The grammatical function fulfilled by certain types of constituent which precede the head of their containing phrase. For example, on one analysis of a sentence such as John is working, John is superficially the specifier (and subject) of the present tense auxiliary is. Likewise, under the traditional CP analysis of a question such as What did John do?, what is superficially the specifier of the C constituent containing the inverted auxiliary did. The notation spec-XP (or equivalently spec-X) denotes the specifier of XP (or equivalently the specifier of X). Spellout: The spellout of an item is the way in which it is pronounced (which in turn is represented by the way it is spelled in the English writing system). To say that an item has a null spellout is to say that is silent/unpronounced. For example, in a sentence like: (i) Where are you going (to)?
the italicised preposition can either be given an overt spellout as to, or can be given a null/silent spellout (and thus not be pronounced). Split projections: Certain constituents which were taken to comprise a single layer of structure in earlier work (e.g. verb phrases/VP, prepositional phrases/ PP and the clause periphery/CP) have been reanalysed in subsequent research as having a much more complex structure comprising two or more layers of structure – or, to use the relevant terminology, they have been ‘split’ into two or more separate projections. For example, verb phrases have been split into a lexical projection (VP) contained within a functional projection (vP), and similarly prepositional phrases have been split into a lexical projection (PP) contained within a functional projection (pP). Under the split projection analysis of prepositional phrases outlined in §3.3, preposition doubling arises when PP is fronted and pP is stranded, and a copy of the preposition is spelled out in the head position of both PP and pP. In cartographic work (discussed in §1.3), CP has been split into multiple projections, including
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FORCEP, TOPP, FOCP, INTP and FINP, and for obvious reasons this is widely referred to as the ‘split CP analysis’ of the clause periphery. Spurious: See Intrusive. SSP: Silent stranded preposition. The SSP analysis of gapless relatives like that bracketed below: (i) The main target was to finish ahead of Ferrari, [which we’ve extended our lead by 4 points]
posits that they involve relativisation of the complement of a stranded preposition which is present in the syntax but is given a silent spellout in the phonology. In the case of (i), the ‘missing’ preposition might be over, so that (under one implementation of the SSP analysis) the relative clause in (i) would have the fuller structure below (where angle brackets indicate that the enclosed item is present in the syntax but given a silent pronunciation in the phonology): (ii) [which we’ve extended our lead by 4 points]
See §4.2. Stranding: A constituent is said to be stranded if it is left behind when its complement moves. So, in a sentence such as: (i) The offside rule, a lot of people are completely baffled by ―
the phrase the offside rule originates in the gap position as the complement of the preposition by and is then moved into the clause periphery, thereby stranding the preposition by (i.e. leaving it without its complement). The Stranding Constraint bars determiners, quantifiers or numerals (and certain other kinds of word) from being stranded without their complement. This constraint will prevent (e.g.) the noun phrase closure of the road from being preposed in a sentence like that below, because it will leave the determiner the stranded: (ii) *Closure of the road, the residents decided to oppose the
Structural Uniformity Principle/SUP: A principle which specifies that all constituents of the same type have the same structure. It follows from this principle that if a relative clause like that bracketed below is a RELP constituent containing a relative pronoun on the edge of RELP: (i) He is someone [who I have a lot of time for]
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268 Glossary and Abbreviations then (on structural uniformity grounds) it is plausible to suppose that a zerorelative clause like that bracketed below (which doesn’t contain any overt relative pronoun): (ii) He is someone [I have a lot of time for]
can likewise be analysed as a RELP constituent, albeit one containing a silent counterpart of the relative pronoun who on the edge of RELP. SUB/SUBP: An abbreviation for subordinator/subordinator phrase. In some cartographic work, an adverbial clause like that bracketed below: (i) I went home early [because I was feeling unwell]
would be analysed as headed by the subordinating conjunction (= SUB) because, and consequently the bracketed subordinate clause would be categorised as a SUBP. SUBJ/SUBJP: In some cartographic work, the subjects of clauses are said to be positioned on the edge of a SUBJP/subject phrase constituent which has an abstract SUBJ/subject constituent as its head: see ch.1, fn. 10. In a different use (for example ch. 1, 13a), subj is use as a gloss for ‘subjunctive mood’. Successive-cyclic: Long-distance movement (e.g. movement of a constituent out of one clause into another) is generally believed to take place in a successive-cyclic fashion – i.e. in a series of short steps/cycles. For example, in a sentence such as: (i) Where is it thought that he has gone to ―?
the pronoun where originates at the end of the gone clause (in the gap position, as the complement of the preposition to) and from there moves to the front of the thought clause. However, locality constraints (which restrict how far a constituent can travel in any single operation) mean that this movement applies in two successive steps, with where moving first to the front of the gone clause, and from there to the front of the thought clause – as shown (within the CP analysis of clauses) by the arrows below: (ii) [CP Where [C is] it thought [CP where [C that] he has gone to where]]
The locality constraint which forces movement to take place in two successive steps here is one which forbids a constituent postioned below the edge of CP
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Glossary and Abbreviations
269
(here, below that) to move directly to a position above the edge of the relevant CP. See ch. 3, fn. 23 for variants of this constraint. SUP: See Structural Uniformity Principle. Syncretic/syncretise: To say that two constituents are syncretised means they are conflated/collapsed/fused into one. For example, although many personal pronouns have separate nominative/accusative case forms (e.g. I/me, he/him, they/them), the pronoun you has the syncretic/syncretised nominative+accusative form you (i.e. it has a single form you which serves both as a nominative and an accusative form). T: T denotes a tense-marking constituent containing a tensed auxiliary, or an abstract tense affix. TP denotes a tense projection/tense phrase – i.e. a structure headed by a tense-marked auxiliary or an abstract tense affix. This in a sentence such as the following: (i) He said that [she was going home]
the past tense auxiliary was is a T constituent, and the bracketed structure is a TP/tense projection), comprising the subject she, the T auxiliary was and the verb phrase going home). In some work, the infinitive particle to is said to be a T constituent, because it often has future time reference, e.g. in a clause like that bracketed below: (ii) She hopes [to win the race]
Template: A template is a type of schema used to show the relative ordering of different types of constituent within a given type of structure. For example, on one view, the order of constituents within the clause periphery can be described in terms of a template such as the following (where an asterisk indicates the possibility of having one or more constituents of the relevant type): (i) FORCEP > TOPP* > INTP > TOPP* > FOCP > TOPP* > MODP* > TOPP* > FINP
TOP/Topic/TOPP: In a dialogue such as the following: speaker a: I’ve been having problems with the Fantasy Syntax seminar
speaker b: That kind of course, very few students seem to be able to get their heads round
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270 Glossary and Abbreviations the italicised expression that kind of course can be said to be the topic of the sentence produced by speaker b, in the sense that it refers back to the Fantasy Syntax seminar mentioned by the previous speaker: more generally, an expression which represents ‘old’ or ‘familiar’ information is said to be a topic. In cartographic work, topics which occur at the beginning of clauses are said to be contained within a TOPP/topic phrase projection in the clause periphery, headed by an abstract TOP/topic constituent. Trace: Under the Copy Theory of Movement, a constituent leaves behind a copy of itself each time it moves and these copies are traditionally referred to as traces. Thus, a trace is a (generally silent) copy of a moved constituent. Truncated: Some (defective) clauses are said to have a truncated structure in that their periphery contains a reduced structure which is smaller than the periphery of complete (non-defective) clauses. For example, a clause like that bracketed in (i) below can contain a fronted topic like chocolate, but (for many speakers) a clause like that bracketed in (ii) cannot: (i) He admitted [that chocolate, he can’t resist] (ii) *He admitted [chocolate, he can’t resist]
Why should this be? One answer suggested by some linguists is to suppose that complete clauses introduced by a complementiser like that have a full peripheral structure which can include a projection containing a topic, whereas complementiser-less clauses like that in (ii) have a reduced/truncated structure which cannot contain certain types of peripheral projection (e.g. topic or focus phrases). On the possibility that some types of relative clause may have a truncated periphery, see §1.3. Type: Clauses are traditionally classified into types on the basis of the position they occupy (e.g. main clause or embedded clause) and the function they serve (e.g. complement clause, adverbial clause, relative clause and so on). A related notion is that of illocutionary force, concerning whether a clause is declarative, interrogative, exclamative or imperative in force. These two notions are potentially distinct, as we see from clauses like that bracketed below: (i) This is a vital piece of evidence, [which how come the police overlooked?]
Here, the bracketed clause is relative in type, but interrogative in force. Uniformity: See Structural Uniformity Principle. Uninterpretable: See Interpretable.
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Glossary and Abbreviations
271
VP/vP: Abbreviation for a verb phrase headed by a lexical verb (= VP) or by an abstract light verb (=vP): see Split projections. WH: A symbol used to denote a silent/null relative wh-pronoun (in effect, a silent counterpart of which or who). On this view, what appears to be a wh-less relative clause like that bracketed below: (i) He is someone [that I know very well]
will have the fuller structure in (ii) below, and will involve movement of a silent WH pronoun from the gap position to the lefthand edge of RELP: (ii) He is someone [RELP WH [REL that] I know ― very well]
Wh-cleft: See Cleft sentence. Wh-Movement: A type of movement operation whereby a constituent comprising or containing a wh-word is moved to the front of a particular clause. Thus, in (i) below, interrogative where undergoes Wh-Movement from the gap position in the bracketed complement clause to the front of the overall sentence: (i) Where did you say [he’s gone ―] ?
Similarly, in (ii) below, the relative pronoun where undergoes Wh-Movement from the gap position to the front of the bracketed relative clause: (ii) That’s the place [where he went ―]
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Index
A-bar movement 59, 61, 137, 144, 209 A-bar position 99, 115 Abney, S.P. 159 Ackerman, L. 62 adjunction 147 adverbial nouns 35, 194, 197 Alemannic 42, 183, 187 Alexiadou, A. 159 Alexopoulou, T. 55, 57 Allen, C. 135 amount relatives 14 anaphor, reflexive 47 Antecedent Raising 5, 47–52, 53, 57, 61, 92, 97–8, 101, 104, 107, 113, 115–16, 119, 121–2, 132 Antilocality Constraint 152, 206 appositive relatives 7–10, 53, 108 see also FARK relatives gapless 215, 218–33, 239–41 Merge analysis 108, 111 preposition doubling 137 resumptive 63, 92, 96–7, 115, 117–18 WH-movement derivation 98, 120–1, 136–7 argument 87, 155 Armstrong, N. 141 Australian English 220–2, 233 Auxiliary Inversion 21, 27 Baron, D. 166 Barriers model 18 Barrierhood Condition 158 base-generation 56, 58–61, 111, 159, 226 Bavarian 42 Bayer, J. 42 Belletti, A. 153 Beltrama, A. 62
Benincà, P. 11–13, 51–2, 63–4 Berizzi, M. 39 Bernstein, J.B. 196 Bever, T.G. 55 Biber, D. 32 Binding Theory Principle B 50 Principle C 50, 51 Bingham, G. 155 blend/s 181–5, 188, 190, 236, 242 Block, G.H. 195 Blythe, H. 62 Boeckx, C. 57, 153, 206 Boxell, O. 138, 185–8, 193, 232, 237–9, 241, 242 Brandner, E. 85 British National Corpus 140, 196, 221 Broekhuis, H. 111, 141 Burke, I. 193, 221–2, 225, 232–3, 239–41, 242 Cann, R. 55 canonical relatives 3 Caponigro, I. 197 cartographic model of syntax 18–20, 207, 244 Case Assigner Insertion (CAI) 156–8, 165 Case Constraint 203–4 Case Filter 156–7, 160 c-command 44, 50–2, 91–2, 106–7, 144, 159 Chao, W. 59 Chinese 227, 243 Chomsky, N. 18, 56, 58, 73, 143, 156, 160 Barriers model/Barrierhood Condition 146, 158 Case Filter 156 Government and Binding model 18 Inclusiveness Condition 159 Minimalist Program 18 Subjacency Condition 158
310
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Index No Tampering Condition 159–60 Cinque, G. 9, 11–13, 51–2, 63–4 Collins, C. 197–8, 200–14, 223 Complementiser Deletion 201–5 complete clause 28, 68–71, 77, 214 COMP-trace filter 69 Comrie, B. 67 Constraint on Extraction Domains (CED) 26, 71, 74, 77, 109, 111, 122, 212, 217 Contact Relative Constraint 77 contact relatives 13–14, 71 Coordinate Structure Constraint 49, 218 Coppock, E. 181 copy theory of movement 56, 99, 138 corpus see British National Corpus; Freiburg Corpus; Kroch corpus; UWA Corpus of Australian English 221–2, 228, 233 Cowart, W. 56, 61 Cresswell, C. 55 Criterial Freezing Condition (CFC) 26, 68–9, 109–10, 122 Culicover, P. W. 72, 109
311
FARK relatives derivation 45–52 structure 14–24 Farnworth (Manchester) dialect 34, 219–20, 233 Fay, D. 135, 181–2 Felser, C. 138, 141–5, 185–8, 193, 232, 237–9, 241, 242 filler–gap relatives 1, 3, 5, 7, 85, 204, 241 finite clauses 21, 25, 36, 41, 83–4, 88, 106, 200, 202 Fiorentino, G. 85 Flemish 183, 187 FOC/FOCP/focus 19–24, 25–8, 68, 109, 127 force/FORCEP 10, 12, 19–29, 31–2, 38, 52–3, 68, 83, 124–8, 131 free relatives 14 Free, M. 166 Freezing Principle 72, 109–10 Freiburg Corpus of English Dialects 196 Friedmann, N. 61 Frozen Subject Constraint 69–71, 76, 77 functional head 22
Dankaert, L. 27 Decamp, 166 default case assignment (DCA) 59, 96–7, 100, 120, 160–1, 226–7 default spellout 160 Dekkers, J. 141 Denison, D. 134 derivation of relatives 45–52 determiner phrase/DP 15–16, 44–50, 65, 93, 97, 98, 101, 104, 106–7, 109–18, 122, 159–60, 197, 200, 208–12, 228 Dickens, Charles 36, 220 Dickey, M.W. 63 dislocated topic constituents 20, 28, 70, 111, 123–8, 131, 226 Doubly Filled COMP Filter (DFCF) 30–1, 37, 41, 44, 200 Douglas, J. 25, 28, 31, 124, 131
Galasso, J. 169 gap relatives see filler-gap relatives gapless relatives 3, 5, 191–2 fronted preposition analysis 200–14 prepositionless analyses 214–31 processing analyses 232–42 stranded preposition analyses 192–200 gapping 16 Geisler, C. 139 Gelderen, E. van 221 Gordon, T. W. 193, 195, 198, 214–15 Greek 57, 61 Grice, H. 140 Gries, S. 139, 196 Grimshaw, J. 135, 141 Guéron, J. 21 Gysel, J. van 140
economy, principle of 42, 140–2 Edge Constraint 201–8, 214 Electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English, The 193 Emonds, J.E. 170, 175, 189 Endo, Y. 73 Erteshik-Shir, N. 61, 62, 80 exclamative relatives 23–4, 27, 28, 29, 37
Haegeman, L. 20, 21, 27, 73, 159 Hale, K. 146 Hampe, B. 139 he 49–51 Head Movement 149 Hebrew (colloquial) 57, 61 Heestand, D. 62 Hellmantel, M. 152
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312 Index Herrmann, T. 56, 193, 196, 232, 233 Hilpert, M. 167 Hinrichs, L. 13 Hladnik, M. 85 Hoffmann, T. 139, 140, 178, 183 Hofmeister, P. 62 Huddleston, R. 74 hypercorrection 5, 166–75 Icelandic 183, 187 Ihalainen, O. 219, 225 infinitival relatives 11, 13, 31, 36, 53, 202 wh-relatives 25 zero-relatives 25 interpretable features 22, 27, 160 interrogative phrase/projection/INTP 19, 22, 24, 68, 126 intervening string length (ISL) 80–2, 179–80, 235–6 Intervention Constraint 23, 77, 78 intrusive preposition see preposition intrusion Irish 57 irrealis 11 island 56–7, 61–2 see also Quotative Island Constraint Japanese 227, 243 Jespersen, O. 74 Johansson, C. 139 Jónsson, J.G. 139, 183 Jurka, J. 111 Kathol, A. 42 Kayne, R.S. 56, 172 Keenan, E. 67 Keenan-Comrie Accessibility Hierarchy 74 Keller, F. 55, 57 Kenyan English 140, 178, 183, 232 Keyser, S.J. 146 kind relatives 10–13, 51–2, 64–6, 84–5, 87, 91, 95–7, 108, 113–14, 118, 239 abstract 218 preposition doubling in 137 gapless 215–18, 230 prepositionless 217 see also FARK relatives Kjellmer, G. 220 Koopman, H. 200 Kortmann, B. 193 Kratzer, A. 146
Kroch corpus 4, 11, 34, 55, 66, 92–3, 103 Kroch, A. 4, 55, 58–9 Kuha, M. 103, 220 Kuno, S. 59, 129 Lamontagne, G. 159 Larson R.K. 146 Lasnik, H. 33, 175, 189 Lebanese Arabic 57 Leeuw, F. 141 Left Branch Condition (LBC) 76, 111, 119, 122 Legendre, G. 141 Liberman, M. 134, 136, 155, 161–2, 166–7, 172–4 light constituent 203 local/locality 40, 73, 76, 78, 92, 134, 158, 178 Loebel, E. 159 Loock, R. 221, 223, 225, 232–3 Lothian Scottish English 220, 233 Lucernese 42 Lunkenheimer, K. 193 Mackenzie, I.E. 141 matching analysis 45, 46, 93–4, 101, 116 McCawley, J.D. 9, 10 McCloskey, J. 59 McCormick, P. 173 McDaniel, D. 56, 61, 63, 196 McKee, C. 61, 63, 196 Merchant, J. 59, 232 Merge analysis nominal resumptives 113–22, 131 pronominal resumptives 95–6, 104–13, 131 relative and topic structures 129–30 Miller, J. 193, 220 Minimalist Program 18 MOD/modifier head 39, 149 MODP/modifier phrase/projection 19–20, 23, 31, 39, 68, 78, 122, 126, 148–50, 208, 212 Morgan, A.M. 55, 62 Move analysis nominal resumptives 113, 117, 120–1 pronominal resumptives 96, 105, 108, 112–13 relative and topic structures 129 Müller, G. 85, 141 Nakao, C. 62 Nevins, A. 159 Nishimura, M. 168 non-canonical relatives 1–6
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Index non-wh-relativisers 32, 132 that 36–8 zero 40–1 Norcliffe, E. 62 North Norwegian dialects 42 North Saxon 183, 187 Norwegian 183, 187 null operator 60, 143, 163, 210 Nykiel, J. 139, 178, 188 Omaki, A. 153 One Feature One Head Principle 22, 27 operator 22, 23–5, 46, 58, 73, 78, 129, 138, 143, 217, 230 Paduan (Italian dialect) 63 Parker, F. 154–62, 165–7, 172, 176, 182–4, 189 Patterson, G.W. 193, 195, 198, 214–15 Pearl, L. 197 Perlmutter, D.M. 56 Pesetsky, D. 56, 99, 141 PF (phonetic form) component 135 structure 47, 202 phi-features 63 pied-piping 9, 109–12, 120 of prepositions 33, 35, 39, 88, 132–3, 140–5, 153–4, 159–60, 162–3, 167–8, 176, 182–3, 185–9, 198–9, 204–14, 232, 234, 237–8, 242 polarity item 144 Poletto, C. 153 Polinsky, M. 62 Postal, P.M. 232 Poutsma, H. 175 preposition doubling 2, 5 as copying 135–46 as hypercorrection 166–75 as speech error 175–88 as splitting 146–54 Preposition Ghosting 201, 203–8 preposition intrusion 134, 154–65 as hypercorrection 166–75 as speech error 175–88 Preposition Inversion 200, 202, 204, 206 preposition stranding 74, 132, 141, 144, 153, 182–3, 186, 188, 196, 204, 233, 237 Preposition Stranding Constraint 77, 79 prepositional relatives 2–3, 132–4 prescriptive education 33, 55, 62, 169
313
prescriptive rules 169–71, 175, 186–7, 189, 196 Prince, E. 10, 63 Pullum, G.K. 74, 134, 138 quotative island cases 74 Quotative Island Constraint 77, 122 Radford, A. 20, 42, 71, 106, 135, 138, 141–5, 146, 148, 185–8, 193, 197–8, 200–14, 223, 227, 232, 233, 237–9, 241, 242 Recoverability Condition 196, 214, 238 recursion CP 18 FINP 31 registers 5–6, 54 archaic 9 differences in resumptive and gap relatives 82, 130 gapless relatives in 233 null spellout 193–5 preposition doubling 168, 170, 184 preposition ghosting 203 resumptives in 56, 86 silent preposition in standard 198 spellout/pied piping in 167 Reid, J. 220, 221 Relativised Minimality Condition 73, 158, 212 relativisers in gap relatives 32–44 in resumptive relativisers 83–95 see also wh-relativisers and non-wh relativisers REL/RELP 22–32, 38–53 restrictive relatives 7–10, 132 see also FARK gap 83 gapless 231 preposition doubling 137 resumptives 63–6 resumptive relatives 2, 5, 54–5 existing research on 55–66 grammaticality of 55–6 inaccessibility hypothesis 66–83 nature of relativisers used in 83–95 nominal resumptives 113–22 pronominal resumptives 95–113 relative and topic structures 123–30 Riemsdijk, H. van 152, 200 Riley K. 154–62, 165–7, 172, 176, 182–4, 189 Rizzi, L. 18–20, 21, 26, 27, 68, 73, 125, 126, 158
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314 Index Ross, J.R. 49, 55, 56, 139, 194, 218 Rudin, C. 134, 163, 166–7, 169
truncated relative clauses 24–32 Tsai, W.-T.D. 230
Sag, I.A. 41, 82, 178, 234, 235 Schönefeld, D. 139 Sells, P. 57, 59, 141 Shaughnessy, M.P. 166 Shlonsky, U. 26, 27, 68 Shorrocks, G. 34, 219–20 Sichel, I. 61 ‘slips of the tongue’ 5 sluicing 16, 194 Smith, J.R. 166 Sobin, N. 33, 175, 189 Somerset English 219, 233 specifier 15–17 speech errors 175–88 splice blend 181 split projection analysis 146–54, 206 Stanton, J. 46 Starke, M. 73 Staum Casasanto, L. 41, 82, 178, 234, 235 Staurou-Sëphakë, M. 159 Structural Uniformity Principle (SUP) 44, 92–3, 225 Subjacency Condition 158 successive-cyclic movement 46, 49, 142, 158 Suñer, M. 58 Swedish 57, 183, 187 Swift, Jonathan 220 Swiss German 42, 183, 187 syncretic/syncretise 26–7, 34 Szabolsci, A. 200
Universal Grammar 4 Uriagereka, J. 153
Thai 227, 243 Travis, L. 159 Trotta, J. 139
Vikner S. 141 Villa-García, J. 208 Vogel, R. 141 Wagers, M. 55, 62 Weijer, J. van der 141 Weinert, R. 220 Wexler, K. 72, 109 wh-cleft 137 wh-deletion 202, 205 WH-Movement 45–52 in gapless relatives 200–4, 217–18 in prepositional relatives 136–7, 141–6, 153, 189 in resumptive relatives 56, 68, 98–9, 101, 109–11, 115–16, 118–20, 122 wh-relativisers 20, 32–6, 44 what 39–40, 83 when 35 where 35, 84–5 whereby 85–8 which/who 32–5, 88–95 Xiang, M. 62 Yáñez-Bouza, N. 134, 178 zero-relatives 1, 40, 71, 84, 239 finite 25, 28 gapless 203 infinitival 25 Zwicky, A.M. 42
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