Amount Relative Clauses in English and Romanian: a Minimalist Approach

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………………9

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION......................................................................11

CHAPTER 2

THE SYNTAX OF RELATIVE CLAUSES........................................20

2.1 Introduction.................................................................................................. 20

2.2. The Competing Proposals............................................................................ 21

2.2.1 The Complementation/Head Raising Analysis (HRA)............................ 21

2.2.1.1 Antisymmetry and its consequences on the analysis of headed

relative clauses (Kayne 1994, Borsley 1997).............................................. 23

2.2.1.2. Head ‐ raising revised...................................................................... 28

2.2.1.3. Promotion and feature movement............................................... 30

2.2.2 The Adjunction/Matching Analysis (MA)............................................... 32

2.3 Advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches............................... 36

2.3.1 Arguments in favour of the HRA........................................................... 37

2.3.1.1 Head ‐ internal relatives................................................................... 37

2.3.1.2 The pivot function.......................................................................... 38

2.3.1.3 Indefiniteness of the trace............................................................. 38

2.3.2 Problems for the HRA............................................................................ 40

2.3.2.1 Relative pronouns cannot take an NP complement....................... 40

2.3.2.2 Trigger for the movement of the NP.............................................. 41

2.3.2.3 Case................................................................................................ 43

2.3.2.4 Pied ‐ piping...................................................................................... 44

2.4 Reconstruction effects in English and Romanian restrictive relative

clauses……………………………………………………………………………………………………………46

2.4.1 Introduction........................................................................................... 46

2.4.2 Idiom interpretation.............................................................................. 46

2.4.3 Variable binding..................................................................................... 53

2.4.4 Scope..................................................................................................... 54

2.4.5 The interpretation of superlative adjectives......................................... 55

2.4.6 Reconstruction for binding.................................................................... 58

2.4.7 Principle C.............................................................................................. 62

2.4.7.1 Asymmetry between relative clauses and wh ‐ interrogatives........ 62

2.4.7.2 Asymmetry between complements and adjuncts.......................... 66

2.4.7.3 Asymmetry between the external head and the operator phrase 68

2.4.7.4 Principle C and idioms/variable binding/scope reconstruction..... 70

2.4.8 Conclusions............................................................................................ 71

2.5 Non ‐ reconstruction of the external head..................................................... 71

2.5.1 Idioms and anaphors............................................................................. 71

2.5.2 Extraposition.......................................................................................... 73

2.6 Conclusions................................................................................................... 74

CHAPTER 3

AMOUNT RELATIVE CLAUSES IN ENGLISH..............................76

3.1 Introduction.................................................................................................. 76

3.2 What is an amount relative clause? Defining “amount” as a relative of the

third kind............................................................................................................ 78

3.2.1. Typology of relative clauses................................................................. 79

3.2.2. Descriptive characteristics of amount relatives................................... 85

3.2.2.1 There insertion contexts................................................................. 85

3.2.2.2 Antecedent ‐ contained deletion..................................................... 90

3.2.2.3 Contexts of cardinality........................................................................ 92

3.3.3 Ambiguous contexts.............................................................................. 94

(Identity of substance vs. identity of quantity).............................................. 94

3.3 Degrees and maximality............................................................................... 95

3.4 Properties of English amount relatives........................................................ 98

3.4.1 Restriction on determiners.................................................................... 99

3.4.1.1 There ‐ insertion contexts................................................................ 99

3.4.1.2 Carlson's range of determiners in contexts of cardinality........... 102

3.4.1.3 Determiner selection and reconstruction.................................... 104

3.4.2 Complementizer selection................................................................... 104

3.4.3 Stacking................................................................................................ 107

3.5 Syntactic analyses of ARs............................................................................ 109

3.5.1 Carlson’s (1977) and Grosu&Landman’s (1998) approach to raising.. 109

3.5.2 von Fintel’ s (1999) meaning of chains................................................ 111

3.5.3 Herdan’s (2008) superlative theory of amount relatives.................... 111

3.6 Conclusions................................................................................................. 113

CHAPTER 4

AMOUNT RELATIVE CLAUSES IN ROMANIAN........................115

4.1 Introduction................................................................................................ 115

4.2. Properties of amount relative clauses (AR) in Romanian.......................... 119

4.2.1 Restriction on relativizers (internal determiners)............................... 120

4.2.2 Selection of the external determiner.................................................. 125

4.2.3 Stacking................................................................................................ 129

4.3 Types of amount relative clauses in Romanian.......................................... 130

4.3.1 Indefinite ARs...................................................................................... 131

4.3.1.1 Atât...cât ARs................................................................................ 132

4.3.1.2 ARs with indefinite quantifiers.................................................... 136

4.3.2.3 ARs with cardinals......................................................................... 137

4.3.2 Definite ARs......................................................................................... 142

4.3.3 ARs with (overt or covert) gradable NP heads.................................... 145

4.4 Syntax of degree phrases in Romanian...................................................... 147

4.4.1 A brief overview of the theoretical approaches to degrees................ 148

4.4.2 Monotonicity and the structure of gradable predicates..................... 158

4.4.3 DegP c ât in degree constructions........................................................ 163

4.5. The Syntactic analysis of ARs in Romanian................................................ 176

4.5.1 Head internal and head external analyses.......................................... 177

4.5.2 Deriving ARs........................................................................................ 179

4.6 Conclusions................................................................................................. 189

CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSIONS......................................................................193

SUMMARY IN ROMANIAN/ REZUMAT..................................196

BIBLIOGRAPHY.....................................................................211