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Formal Studies in Slovenian Syntax: In honor of Janez Orešnik
Edited by Franc Lanko Marušič and Rok Žaucer
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 236] 2016
► pp. 221–252

A relative syntax and semantics for Slovenian

| University of Graz & Bled Institute

This paper entertains a novel, or rather transplanted, morhosyntactic and morphosemantic analysis of Slovenian Free Relative (FR) wh-markers with the signature enclitic -r morpheme. The syntax and semantics of -r marked FRs in Slovenian is set against an empirical observation of seeming morphosyntactic identity of interrogative and relative expressions (qua Caponigro’s generalisation) and is derived from the theoretical model of Chierchia & Caponigro (2013), who derive the syntax and semantics of FRs from interrogatives. In this spirit, we identify the sole derivational difference between questions and FRs in the temporal ordering, derivational procedure and the choice of two excorporation options within the fine-grained clausal spine (Rizzi, 1997) combined with particular assumptions concerning the narrow syntactic status of head movement (Shimada, 2007). Evidence from Slovenian thus serves to substantiate empirically Chierchia & Caponigro’s (2013) model as the -r morpheme is analysed as an overt realisation of an otherwise stipulated operator. Attention is also given to the post-syntactic processes triggered by the presence of the relativising morpheme, substantiating the proposal, specifically, and also, more generally, lending support to an anti-lexicalist view of non-atomicity of relative pronouns in Slovenian.

Published online: 8 December 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.236.10mit
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