query

[George Aaron Broadwell]

Dear all,

At a descriptive level, I believe the restriction is on deletion of the
complementizer/relativizer in a subject relative clause.  So (approximately)
the complementizer/relativizer cannot be deleted if that would result in the
subject head adjacent to the verb of the relative clause:

a.) I saw the man who left
b.) *I saw the man left

There was some discussion of this in the GB literature.  What is odd about
it is that this phenomenon is the opposite of the Comp-trace effect which
prohibits/disfavors overt Comp in the case of subject extraction.  This has
led to it sometimes being called the anti-Comp-trace effect.

(If I recall properly, Rizzi (1990) had a mechanism where the relative
pronoun acts a governor for the trace in the subject position.  So when this
relative pronoun is deleted, the subject trace is ungoverned, and the
sentence is an ECP violation.  I don't think anyone in Minimalism would
accept this solution now, but it might be interesting for historical
reasons.)

I believe Bresnan 1977 was the first to notice that adverbials mitigate the
effects of the Comp-trace prohibition:

*Who do you think that died?
Who do you think that after years and years of suffering finally died?

What you have in your example is an adverbial mitigating the anti-Comp-trace
effect. (Perhaps Joan also mentioned this, but I don't recall it.)

As for the explanation, I would place my bet on something related to
processing.  So Comp is generally obligatory in a subject relative clause
because its absence leads to a processing difficulty.  But clearly that
explanation would need a lot of work...

Best wishes,
Aaron Broadwell


On 2/15/07, Adrian Clynes <aclynes at fass.ubd.edu.bn> wrote:
>
> Dear Syntacticians,
> I've noticed the following contrast:
>
> 1) I've listed 5 students I'm fairly sure are no longer taking this course
> 2) *I've listed 5 students are no longer taking this course
>
> Assuming my grammaticality judgements are shared by others, I'd be
> grateful for an explanation of the contrast.
> In particular what makes 1) grammatical?
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Adrian Clynes
>
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