Relative clauses -- TOPIC or FOCUS?

[Joan Bresnan]

Dick's observations of English relative clauses targetting an
existential NP are not exceptions to Chiba's generalization about
relative vs. interrogative pronouns in English, because none of them
has a relative pronoun.  Witness:

 > (1)  Everything that there was in the garden was beautiful.

In (1) `that' is the invariable complementizer.  A relative pronoun is
much worse: cf. `??everything which there was in garden was beautiful'.

 > (2)  There wasn't much in his house, but what there was [free relative, not
 > interrogative], was tasteful.

In (2) `what' is not a relative pronoun.  The heads of free relatives
are indefinite, including a full series of forms `how(ever)',
`what(ever)' that cannot be used as relative pronouns in Standard
English (e.g. `*the way how he did it was amazing').

 > (3)  All the students that there used to be in the house next door have
 > gone away.

See comments on (1): cf. *`all the students who there used to be in
house next door have gone away'

Dick's concluding remark:

 >                                    Maybe there's some
 > other reason for the badness of Joan's example; but notice that whatever
 > other reason there may be [!!] must be a good one.

Here `whatever' can't possibly be a relative pronoun, because it
PRECEDES the optional `that' that sometimes occurs in these
constructions, as noted by Bresnan and Grimshaw:  cf. `whatever other
reason that [!] there may be must be a good one'.

The Chichewa patterns cited by Bresnan and Mchombo
in Lg (1987) make the point very clearly that topicality is
grammaticalized in the language, and is expressed within the relative
clause.

Joan


>>>Dick Hudson said:
 > Joan:
 > >  Who is there being interviewed? (Question ok with existential.)
 > >  #Someone who there is being interviewed... (Relative not ok with
 > >      existential.)
 > But in general we can relativize the demoted subject of an existential,
 > can't we?
 > (1)  Everything that there was in the garden was beautiful.
 > (2)  There wasn't much in his house, but what there was [free relative, not
 > interrogative], was tasteful.
 > (3)  All the students that there used to be in the house next door have
 > gone away.
 > Presumably the discourse function of the demoted subject is the same in all
 > existentials, so if they're focus  in Joan's example they should be focus
 > in mine too; and yet relativization seems ok in mine. Maybe there's some
 > other reason for the badness of Joan's example; but notice that whatever
 > other reason there may be [!!] must be a good one.
 >
 > Dick
 >
 > Richard (= Dick) Hudson
 >
 > Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London,
 > Gower Street, London WC1E  6BT.
 > +44(0)20 7419 3152; fax +44(0)20 7383 4108;
 > http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/home.htm

---------------------------------
	Joan Bresnan