Carlo Cecchetto and Caterina Donati

depending on the grammatical function of the variable it refers to.

Relative clauses

Gap

Resumptive pronoun

Complementizer

Free relatives

Reduced relatives

2.2. Reduced relatives

3. The nature of the null element: resumptive strategies

4. The nature of the head

4.1. Free relatives

4.2. Light headed relatives

4.3. Free choice free relatives

4.4. Correlatives

4.5. Pseudorelatives

is obligatorily “null” (i.e., realized as a gap or as a resumptive pronoun). Relative clauses can

be finite or non-finite in Romance, with finite ones largely more productive and widespread

across varieties. This chapter will mainly focus on the latter, and only briefly describe the

modifies, when it is present, is called the head, or the antecedent of the relative clause (RC).

illustrated in (1) in Italian

in (2) in Romanian.

which corresponds to the head NP, libro (‘book’). In the Romanian example, the object

position is filled by a pronominal proclitic, which corresponds to the head NP, băiatul (‘boy’).

These two examples illustrate the two main strategies for the realization of the null position of

(2) are cases of object relative clauses, given that the null element is in object position. (3) is a

Met.1SG to-the professor that wrote.1SG this book

‘I met the professor who wrote this book’ Subject RC Spanish

Here the book DONT I CL.2SG have.1SG talked

‘Here is the book I told you about’ Oblique RC: French

‘I am going to talk with the girl whose father is a doctor’ Possessive RC: Catalan

In some cases, when the modified NP contains a noun that can take an argument, it is only the

presence of this empty position that distinguishes a relative clause from a complement clause,

as illustrated in (7’) in Italian (and 7’’ in English).

identical (as is that in English in 7’’’), so that the two structures are ambiguous up to the point

of the position of the object of the verb. This temporary ambiguity and how it is processed on-

line has been recently investigated with respect to Italian RCs (Vernice et al. 2016). See also

Staub et al. (2018) for a similar study on English.

usually called full relatives or headed relatives, as opposed to free or headless relatives, like

(8) in Italian, which will be discussed in § 4.1.

delimits the set of possible objects which the head refers to.

The student who has read the manual has passed the experiment

‘The student who read the manual did the experiment’

The example in (9), for example, presupposes that there is a set of students, and identifies one

of them by saying that the relevant student is the one that read the manual.

The relative clause in (10) does not identify any particular student out of a set, it simply gives

an additional information, namely that this independently identified student read the manual.

clearly separated syntax for restrictive and appositive relative clauses. In (9) and (10) the

the appositive RC. Some other differences concern the distribution of the various relativizing

elements in the two types of clauses, a point to which we shall go back. When not overtly

specified, all we will say in the rest of the chapter should be interpreted as referring to

restrictive relative clauses.

semantically distinct in that the head and the relative clause jointly denote not a set of

individuals, but a set of amounts. This interpretation emerges most clearly in examples like

(11), in which the NP modified by the relative denotes an abstract quantity of wine, rather

It us need.1

No clear syntactic difference distinguishes amount relatives from (other) restrictive relatives

in Romance, and this is why we shall not go back to this type.

article:

supposed to signal its tonic status, as opposed to the unstressed nature of the bare que.

‘the book about which I told you yesterday’

(Brucart 1992: 132)

Before turning to Romanian, which displays a different pattern, let us focus on the nature of

che/que, which has raised much debate. There are two possible analyses for this element.

‘What are you going to do?’

Identifying the relative che/que with an interrogative would make the description of Romance

in its landing site with the head of the construction (see Bianchi 2002 for an overview).

The girl KE have.1

following examples shows this for Italian: relative que/che is not restricted as for the +/-

relative che/que cannot be preceded by a preposition, while interrogative che/que can (at least

interrogative che/que (19).

‘About what book are you talking’

‘I don’t know what to do’

‘I am looking for a book to read’

varieties

is a complementizer: in most (Romance) varieties, the complementizer is indeed incompatible

with a preposition: (20a) and (20b) illustrate this for Italian and French respectively.

‘I am happy that you invited me’

elements.

‘I am happy that you invited me’

Furthermore, the very language, French, which has an allomorph of que with subject gap (qui)

‘The journal that came out yesterday’

b. Quelle revue penses-tu qui [e] est parue hier?

Which journal think.2SG =you that is appeared. FEM. 1SG yesterday

‘Which journal do you think came out yesterday?

A further piece of evidence that seems to push towards an identification of relative che/que

both a wh-element and a complementizer (an option that is barred from standard European

varieties). An illustration from Quebec French is given in (23).

complementizer que in relative clauses, as appears to be the case in interrogatives (23): but

this is not possible in Quebec French: (24).

(24) *La fille qui que t’aime bien (Kayne 1976 : 275)

The girl that that.CL.ACC.2SG=loves good

‘The girl who likes you’

complementizers given that double complementizers are not possible in Quebec French in

Free relatives can also have an adverbial distribution, as in (50). In this case they are also

(50) a. I arrived [when you left]

b. I cooked the dish [how you suggested]

Free relatives are present in all major Romance varieties, as exemplified below.

‘Who will arrive late will not take part to the meeting’

French

cross-linguistic variation. For example in standard Italian free relatives can be introduced by

chi (’who’), dove (’where’), quando (’when’), come (’how’), quanto (‘how’) but not by cosa

(52) a. Ho chiesto cosa hai letto

have.1SG asked what have.2SG read

‘I asked what you read’

b. *Ho comprato cosa hai letto

(54) *He tastat [què has cuinat].

(55) *Comí [ qué cocinaste].

Spanish (Caponigro 2003:168)

Catalan

fully acceptable, though:

‘I gave what you wanted’

Romanian

requirement, another property that sets free relatives and headed relatives apart. In the case of

Romance the matching requirement can be stated as a condition that dictates that the

‘agree’ and conversar ‘talk’ both select for the preposition com ‘with’, the sentence obeys the

matching condition.

(58) Ele só conversa com quem ele concorda.

However, (59) and (60) are ruled out since the verb rir ‘laugh’ selects for the preposition de.

Therefore, there is bound to be a mismatch: if the preposition com introduces the wh-word the

not satisfied (cf. 60).

(59) *Ele sempre concorda com ele ri.

There are syntactic contexts in Romance in which the matching requirement has been argued

Semantically, free relatives come in two main varieties (cf. Šimík to appear for an overview

of the literature of the semantics of free relatives). They can have the semantics of definite

relative provides (this is the only possible way to interpret free relatives in English). For

example, the following sentence can be paraphrased by saying that I reproached all people

have.1SG scolded who is arrived late

‘I scolded who arrived late’

interpretation, for example when they appear in the complement position of existential be and

have.1SG with whom to-chat while wait.1SG

‘There is someone I can chat with while I am waiting’

There=is who can.3SG help

‘There is someone who can help’

say that two families of analyses can be identified. According to a first approach, the free

approach is Donati’s (2006) account, which claims that the wh-word moves as a head into a

dedicated position in the left periphery and by doing so, it endows the clause with the D-

feature required for its nominal interpretation. Donati’s analysis has been incorporated into

Cecchetto and Donati’s (2015) general theory of labeling, according to which words (but not

phrases) have the power to change the label of the category they attach to. This would explain

why free relatives cannot be introduced only by wh-phrases (as opposed to wh-words), as

illustrated in (64) with an Italian example:

which boy arrive.3

4.2. Light headed relatives

varieties in which this is not possible can be loosely related to the presence of an alternative

Citko (2004) called light-headed relatives, where the head has the shape of a demonstrative

pronoun or of a definite determiner and the element che/que is present:

(67) Ho comprato ciò che mi hai suggerito

‘I bought what you suggested’

(68) He tastat el [que has cuinat].

assimilated because light-headed relatives lack two distinctive features of free relatives: they

are not introduced by a wh-word and they do have a head, although this is reduced. Typically

light-headed relatives, unlike free relatives, are not string ambiguous with embedded

formed by the demonstrative ce and by the complementizer que can introduce an embedded

question (70a) in addition to its use in a light-headed relative (70b):

(70) a. Je voudrais savoir [ce que tu as acheté]

Another construction that closely resembles (and that according to some authors should be

assimilated to) ordinary free relatives is so-called free choice free relatives. As we mentioned

by a wh-phrase (as opposed to a wh word). However, if the wh-root attaches to the affix which

Italian (with suffix –unque) and Romanian (with prefix –ori).

(71) [Qualunque ragazzo arriverà in ritardo] non parteciperà alla riunione

Free-choice free relatives are set apart from ordinary free relatives not only by their semantics

example, while che/que is totally unacceptable in ordinary free relatives, it is allowed (or even

obligatory) in free-choice free relatives, at least in some varieties. We report here examples

required to make these sentences fully acceptable.

(74) Informarán a quienquiera que lo solicite

(75) Correggi [ qualunque parola che venga scritta male]

(76) L’opposizione cerca il voto di chiunque

(77) *L’opposizione cerca il voto di chi

Correlative relativization strategies typically include a left-peripheral relative clause that is

(78) [jo laRkii khaRii hai ] vo lambii hai

REL girl standing is that tall is

(80) cannot be a restrictive headed relative, because restrictive relatives do not modify a

appositives and because it has a distinct meaning (roughly speaking it means ‘I saw Jorge

while he was eating an apple’).

listed below:

(81) L’ho visto che correva (Italian)

(ii) Pseudorelatives are grammatical only if the antecedent corresponds to the subject of the

pseudorelative, as shown by the contrast between (82) and (83). Object and oblique

(82) J’ai vu Pierre qui embrassait Marie (French)

(84) *J’ai vu Pierre à qui Marie parle.

(iii) While in ordinary relative clauses there are no restrictions relating the tense of the RC to

that of the matrix clause, tense variation in pseudorelatives is more constrained. For example,

a future tense in the pseudorelative is not grammatical if the matrix tense is present perfect.

(85) Ho visto il ragazzo che correrà. (Italian)

(87) *Vi a Juan que era estudiante (Spanish)

(v) Pseudorelatives are selected by a subset of predicates and therefore have a much more

limited distribution than ordinary headed relatives. These predicates typically include verbs of

perception (‘see’, ‘listen’, etc.); propositional attitudes verbs like ‘imagine’ , ‘remember’;

verbs of creation like ‘describe’, ‘draw’ ‘to make a photo of’ etc.; verbs like ‘meet’, ‘find’,

pseudorelatives alternate with gerundive clauses, as illustrated in (88). Although functionally

(88) Vi a Juan tocando la guitarra

(Spanish)

Pseudorelatives are also functionally similar to infinitive constructions, as the following

examples from Raposo (1989: 304), show. However, their internal make-up and their

distribution is different. For example, infinitival adnominal clauses are restricted to perceptual

(89) Vi o Jorge que comia a maçã.

(90) Vi o Jorge a comer a maçã.

from a psycholinguistic prospective.

article on relativization by Valentina Bianchi that appeared in Glotta international in 2002:

approaches to relative clauses, with important references to Romance. Another reference

work for further understanding the debate over relative clauses is the volume edited by

Clauses, and in particular the introduction by the editors. A third important starting point on

the raising analysis, from its very first formulation (Vergnaud 1974; to its more recent revival

critique of the raising analysis and de Vries (2002). A development of the raising analysis

largely based on Italian and Romance is Donati and Cecchetto (2011), further developed in

Cecchetto and Donati (2015). Recent work by Cinque, importantly but not exclusively based

on Romance within a typological perspective, is going towards a unification of the raising

analysis and the matching analysis, and arguing for a universal prenominal origin of relative

clauses: see in particular Cinque (2013) and Cinque (in preparation).

(1991) and of the comprehensive volume edited by Rouveret (Rouveret 2011). See also Suñer

(1998) on resumptive strategies in Romance crosslinguistically and Contreras (1999) for

relatives and related constructions in Spanish.

Romance varieties including Italian dialects, and Koopman and Sportiche (2014) on French.