Privizentseva (2026): The Syntax of Relative Clauses and the Nature of Merge #

In Moksha the head of an externally headed relative clause may bear the case assigned inside the relative clause instead of the main-clause case, inverse case attraction (ICA). The book argues that the head's case predicts its connectivity: relatives with ICA are derived by raising, regular externally headed relatives by the head-external derivation, and no rival that gives the two one derivation, or raises both, fits the data (chapter 4).

A derivation is a chain of the head noun phrase. Its restrictor is first merged at the foot or, by wholesale late merger, at a position where the noun phrase receives case, which the order of the head noun's case probe and its Merge feature for the relative CP fixes (the book's Table 5.1, caseSite). An idiom needs the noun first merged with its verb, an anaphor in the head a binder above some merge point, and Condition C a merge point above the pronoun (Minimalist.LateMergerBleeds). The same order explains the left-periphery restriction: a head whose case was valued in the relative clause has no active case probe for main-clause selection, so it is displaced (section 5.3), which the labeling algorithm, labeling the verb and its object whatever the object's case, does not force. Merging the relative determiner with a noun that still selects the relative clause is outside triggered Merge, where one factor is saturated; the book lets a phrase be selected before it is saturated (section 5.5), which licenses every stage of the raising derivation; triggered Merge rejects the stages before the noun is copied out, though it accepts the derived object, which holds only the noun's trace. The derivation copies the noun and kona's phrase onto a stack and merges them back in the reverse order. Moving kona's phrase first and subextracting the noun, the alternative footnote 14 of the article weighs, is licensed as well, but violates Freezing, which the stack derivation obeys, and leaves the complementizer and the noun out of c-command. The appositive and restrictive readings of relatives with ICA rule out a correlative or internally headed placement (section 3.3.1), and attraction is not ordered by a case hierarchy (section 3.5).

Main statements #

rows_predicted: the analysis predicts every structural connectivity judgment of chapter 4.
no_uniform_derivation, raising_only_fails: the rivals the book rejects fail on the rows.
inSitu_rows: a relative stays in its base position exactly when its head's case probe is still active there.
raisingRelative_licensed, triggeredMerge_rejects_raisingRelative: selection before saturation licenses the raising derivation at every stage, which triggered Merge rejects though it accepts the derived object.

Implementation notes #

Heights order the head's position in the relative clause below the main-clause position, with a binder or pronoun of each clause just above the head's position there.
Variable binding by a pronoun and crossover show no contrast between the two kinds of relative (pronounVariable_and_crossover_uniform); the book concludes that they do not rest on c-command in syntax, and they are not modelled as structural.
Rows with speaker variation (%, the second idiom) are left out of rows_predicted.

TODO #

Section 6.2 obviates Condition C in the main clause, for a name inside the relative clause, by late merger of the head with its relative clause into the external determiner, which the chain of the head's restrictor does not model; the rows ch. 6 (11) and (12) record the data.
The merge positions that section 5.4.4 gives the head inside a postpositional phrase are not modelled; konaRows_case records the pattern they derive.

Privizentseva (2026): The Syntax of Relative Clauses and the Nature of Merge #

Main statements #

Implementation notes #

TODO #

References #

Sites and features #

Derivations of the head noun phrase #

The data #

The analysis #

The left periphery (sections 3.3.2 and 5.3) #

Projecting movement (section 5.2.2) #

The attracted case (section 3.5) #

Readings (section 3.3.1) #

The case of the relative pronoun (sections 3.5 and 5.4.4) #