The syntax of Tagalog relative clauses

Abstract

Four superficially different types of Tagalog relative clauses (head-initial, head-final and internally headed and headless) are argued to have the same D CP underlying structure and derivation. It is suggested that the head noun raises to SpecCP (Vergnaud 1974. French relative clauses. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation; Kayne 1994. The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) leaving a copy of itself in the original position. Evidence for movement of the head in all four types comes from their showing the same behavior as overt movement observed elsewhere. Their superficial differences are the results of deletion of the copy in the TP or the copy at the landing site. The TP in the CP is not fronted, contra Aldridge (2003. Remnant movement in Tagalog relative clause formation. Linguistic Inquiry 34. 631-640), but remains in-situ. It is shown that the position of the (overt) head noun coincides precisely with that of the absolutive argument in the declarative. The types of relative clauses in English, Quechua, and Japanese are suggested to be related to independently available options of deleting different copies of the head noun. Two consequences that follow from the head-raising analysis proposed here are that the null operator analysis (Chomsky 1986. Barriers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Browning 1987. Null operator constructions. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation) for relative clauses cannot be correct, and that languages other than the SOV ones may have internally headed relative clauses as well, contrary to Cole (1987. The structure of internally headed relative clauses. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 5. 277-302).

Internally and externally headed relative clauses in Tagalog

“…gen candy <tr.pfv>give-appl gen woman nom child 'Candy, the woman gave the child.' Law (2016) rejects the TP-fronting derivation of SIHRs. He correctly points out a lack of motivation for movement of the remnant TP.…”

“…Building on earlier work by Aldridge (2003;2004a), Law (2016) derives all four types by raising the head NP to [Spec, CP] in the embedded clause. The different surface positions of the head nominal in (1b) and (1c) are the result of spelling out lower copies of the moved NP.…”

“…I adopt this analysis for EHRCs in section 4.1. ... <libro> ... Law (2016) offers evidence like the following connectivity effects to argue for the raising analysis. The reflexive inside the head NP can be bound by the external argument inside the clause.…”

“…Turning to relative clauses, Aldridge (2003;2004a) and Law (2016) propose analyses that employ head raising along the lines of Kayne (1994) in order to derive EHRCs and SIHRs. In EHRCs, the derivation simply involves movement of the head NP to [Spec, CP] in the embedded clause.…”

“…The discussion and proposals in this paper are laid out in the following way. In the next section, I summarize the analyses proposed by Aldridge (2003;2004a) and Law (2016) and point out relevant shortcomings of both. Section 3 examines the properties of the linker and spells out the proposal that linkers are heads which select unsaturated categories.…”