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Language Change at the Interfaces: Intrasentential and intersentential phenomena
Edited by Nicholas Catasso, Marco Coniglio and Chiara De Bastiani
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 275] 2022
► pp. 189–214

Discourse-driven asymmetries between embedded interrogatives and relative clauses in West Germanic

 | University of Konstanz
The article examines embedded constituent questions and relative clauses in West Germanic, arguing that asymmetries regarding doubly filled COMP patterns are due to information-structural differences. While both clause types involve operator movement, they differ crucially regarding the information-structural status of the operator: in interrogatives, the operator can be associated with discourse-new information, while in relative clauses the operator is discourse-old and can be potentially left out. This asymmetry regarding information-structural properties has further important consequences. First, doubling patterns involving an overt operator and an overt complementiser emerge across West Germanic languages in embedded questions but not in relative clauses. Second, the reanalysis of the operator into a complementiser is attested in relative clauses but not in embedded interrogatives.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Reanalysis
  • 3.Doubling and information structure
  • 4.Historical changes in English
  • 5.Information structure and the Accessibility Hierarchy
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 21 April 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.275.06bac
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