Relativization strategies in temporal adjunct clauses

This article takes a close look at the internal structure of temporal adverbial clauses in a number of unrelated languages, with a goal of uncovering the syntactic variation in these. The focus of discussion will be on temporal clauses that take the form offree relatives. It will be shown that there are minimally two different free relative strategies that can be found in temporal adverbial clauses: anordinary free relativestrategy with a gap in the position of a temporal modifier inside the relative clause and anIP-relativizationstrategy that involves relativization of the whole IP of the temporal clause. It will be shown that the latter strategy is awh-relativization strategy as well and it shows similarity to clausal relativization (sentences of the typeTom arrived, after which Susan left).The language in which the IP-relativization strategy will be isolated and fully analyzed is Hungarian. In this languagebefore/after-clauses (among some other temporal clauses) clearly exhibit a relative clause structure that is different from ordinary relatives. The evidence found in Hungarian will prove useful for the analysis of some temporal clauses in other languages as well. It will be shown that IP-relativization most probably underliesafter-clauses in German and Serbian, too. Further, a brief comparison of Hungarian temporal clauses to temporal clauses in other postpositional languages (Hindi and Basque) will suggest that the IP-relativization strategy inbefore/after-clauses can be thought of as a syntactic alternative tonominalization.

Published online: 11 May 2006
https://doi.org/10.1075/livy.5.04lip