Structure sharing—The case of free relatives in Serbian

Abstract

The puzzling syntax of free relative clauses (FRs) has been the subject of substantive linguistic work. The core issue, which has divided the field, has been to determine whether this type of relative clause is a complex DP whose head is a wh-pronoun or a wh-clause without the overt external head. Lately, some theoretical reconsiderations of the nature of phrase structuring or, more precisely, of the nature of the syntactic operation Merge allowed for a fresh start in this matter. In this paper, I will follow the proposal put forward by Riemsdijk (2006b) that FRs are structurally ambiguous and that they are derived through grafting, a special type of Merge. As the relevant data in Serbian show, this—still unorthodox, though theoretically legitimate—move is also empirically sound. It also provides us with a new insight into another related phenomenon in this language—the optionality of clitic placement in FRs. The analysis will also reinterpret the status of the particle god typically occurring in this type of clauses, showing why it could be viewed as a complementizer.