14.  Headless or Free Relative Clauses			Due Mon  5/21


Consider the following sentences:

(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.
(6) *Which road they took scared us.
(7) *Under whose bed they hid it is a mess.


1.  Investigate the constructions exemplified by "what she is eating"
in (1).  What is their external distribution?  (I.e. where do they
occur?)  What is their internal structure?  Why can't they be WHQ clauses?
(In constructing your own examples, be careful to avoid WHQ clauses.)

The WH clauses in these sentences are called Headless Relative
Clauses or Free Relative Clauses.  They are, of course, not relative
clauses at all, so attach no significance to the name.  There is a
movement involved in the derivation of such clauses.  Let us call it
Free Relative Movement.


2.  Formulate Free Relative Movement and discuss.

3.  Is Free Relative Movement bounded?

4.  Does it obey island constraints?

5.  Would you expect a Free Relative clause to be an island?

6.  Is it one?