Part of
Roots of Afrikaans: Selected writings of Hans den BestenEdited by Ton van der Wouden
[Creole Language Library 44] 2012
► pp. 35–40
This paper is meant as an appendix to den Besten (1981, 1998a), in which the idea is defended that the Afrikaans relative marker wat ‘WHAT’ is a complementizer. Now invariant wat can also be used in possessive relatives in colloquial Afrikaans, which seems to argue for a pronominal status of wat (at least in so fas as the pertinent environment is concerned). However, I will show that there are good reasons to stick to a unitary analysis for invariant relative wat.