Linguistics 113							Spring 2007

Assignment 15
Due Friday  May 25

Free Relatives and WH Clefts

I.  Recall Free Relatives:

(1)   What she is eating is a banana.

(2)   I liked what I saw in the closet.

(3)   The main trouble with what you just said is that it isn't true.

(4)   What Bob is is important to him.

(5)   What she was doing was amusing her.

Remember that these are *not* question clauses (they are -Q CPs):

(6)  *Whether she ate it is a banana.

(7)  *I liked whether I saw something in the closet.

A fairly good simple test for a Free Relative is that it can be paraphrased
by "... the thing that ..." in place of 'what'.

Propose a structural analysis for Free Relatives that accounts for the fact
that they have the distribution of DPs.

There is a movement in Free Relatives.  Let's call it "Free Relative Movement".

1.  Formulate Free Relative Movement and discuss.

2.  Is Free Relative Movement unbounded?

3.  Is the Free Relative Clause an island?




























II.  WH Clefts

Now consider the following sentences:

(8)   What she is eating is a banana.

(9)   What she was doing was peeling a banana.

(10)  What she was doing was washing herself.

(11)  What she was doing was washing her.

(12)  What she was washing was herself.

(13)  What Bob is is important to him.

(14)  What Bob is is important to himself.

(15)  What she was doing was amusing her.

(16)  What she was doing was amusing herself.

Some of these examples involve Free Relatives, but others do not.  (8) is
structurally ambiguous, and has a Free Relative interpretation, as seen
above, but it has another interpretation as well.

1.  Determine which of the above examples cannot have the Free Relative
analysis you developed in Part I.  Discuss thoroughly.

2.  Formulate a new analysis that can allow for the generation of these
examples.  We will call the new analysis WH Clefting.  Discuss thoroughly.

3.  Does WH Clefting involve an unbounded movement?

4.  Is (any part of) the WH Cleft construction an island?

5.  Does the movement in WH Clefting obey island constraints?

NOTE:  This means: can the movement involved in WH Clefting move elements
out of known islands, such as Question clauses, Relative clauses, It Cleft
clauses, or subjects?