Cinque (2020): The Syntax of Relative Clauses #

Cinque derives every type of relative clause from one double-headed structure: the clause is merged in a specifier of the nominal extended projection, the part of that projection below it is the external Head, and the clause contains an internal Head. Movement, deletion under identity and replacement by a proform do the rest (Introduction, §1.5). In a raising derivation the internal Head raises to Spec,CP and deletes the external one, so the overt Head reconstructs into the clause; in a matching derivation the external Head is overt and the internal one is deleted or replaced. Which options a relative clause has depends on its type, through the height at which the type is merged, and on whether the two Heads match (Introduction): a type merged higher has a bigger external Head (externalHead_mono), and a Head is deleted only under identity with the other, so an internal Head bigger than the external one is neither a gap nor raised (RC.WellFormed.not_reconstructs_of_lt).

RCType.externalHead reads the external Head off the order of external Merge (205): the indefinite dP for restrictives, merged between the demonstrative and the cardinal numeral, a full DP for non-restrictives, merged above the demonstrative. A restrictive with a relative pronoun, a DP, is therefore derived by matching and does not reconstruct (RC.WellFormed.not_reconstructs_of_relativePronoun), and maximalizing relatives, which force raising, take no relative pronoun (RC.WellFormed.strategy_ne_relativePronoun_of_maximalizing). The derivations of Universal 20 in Cinque2005 linearize (205), before the noun without movement and after it in the mirror order when the noun's phrase raises past each modifier, which gives the orders of the rigid head-final and head-initial languages of §3.5 (unmarkedOrders_restrictive, unmarkedOrders_participial).

Implementation notes #

A DP with or without its case layer is one size of Head, as in Chapter 4; a DP inside an adposition's or a possessor's phrase is bigger.
(205) is taken without the universal quantifier; the non-integrated non-restrictives above it belong to discourse grammar (§3.1) and are left out.
Verb-coding is not a strategy for the internal Head: §4.6 analyses it as marking on the verb alongside deletion or pronoun retention, under the same size condition.

TODO #

Chapter 2 derives each syntactic type (internally headed, double-headed, headless, correlative) from which Heads are pronounced and where they move; only the two derivations of externally headed relatives are modelled.
The ordering contrasts between stacked relatives that motivate (205), (176)–(177) and (183)–(191), are not rows, and §2.2.3's account of the absence of relative pronouns in prenominal relatives, by R-binding under the linear correspondence axiom, needs a linearization the substrate lacks.

Cinque (2020): The Syntax of Relative Clauses #

Implementation notes #

TODO #

References #

The order of external Merge (§3.5) #

Linearization (§1.4, §3.5) #

The two Heads and the two derivations (§1.5) #

Strategies for the internal Head (Chapter 4) #

The relative clause #

Worked examples #