Abstract
A new facet of D0 is brought to light in this paper; its ability to act as the relative complementizer of participial clauses. Participial relatives in certain languages (e.g., Hebrew) are headed by a particle homophonous to the definite article. The particular behavior of these relatives and their cross-linguistic distribution indicate that this particle is a complementizer-like D0. Moreover, various considerations suggest that participial relatives in other languages (e.g., French), which do not show an overt element of this type, also contain an equivalent (null) D0. The participial clause in both cases is shown to be an AGRP which does not have an internally determined tense. Consequently, it is proposed that it is the presence or absence of tense that defines the choice between C0 and D0 as the relative complementizer. Finally, as participial relatives seem to involve an operator-variable chain, like regular relatives, the licensing of the variable in an apparently Caseless position is briefly discussed.
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I wish to thank for helpful comments and suggestions Adriana Belletti, Hagit Borer, Robin Clark, Marc-Ariel Friedemann, Richard Kayne, Luigi Rizzi, Bonnie Schwartz, Ur Shlonsky, Tim Stowell and two anonymous reviewers. Parts of this paper were presented at the First Leiden Conference for Junior Linguists (1989), the Workshop on Hebrew Syntax (Jerusalem, 1990), and CUNY Graduate Center (1991).
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Siloni, T. On participial relatives and complementizer D0: A case study in Hebrew and French. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 13, 445–487 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992738
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992738