English Relativization and Certain Related Problems

Abstract

It is claimed that what and which, both as interrogatives and as relatives, are derived from the same underlying representations, WH + SOME and WH + THAT, respectively. It is assumed that, in the basic form of relativization, the two occurrences of the noun modified by a relative clause, in the matrix and the constituent sentences, may take different determiners. Indeed, all of the four possible ways of distributing the two basic determiners in the matrix and the constituent sentences are claimed to be realized in certain types of relativization. A transformation called DEFINITIZATION which transforms indefinite determiners into definite ones is substantiated in the course of the argument. Some considerations of semantic character are also added.