Drawing on a wide range of languages, Cinque argues that all relative clause types derive from a single, double-headed, structure.

This book presents a cross-section of recent generative research into the syntax of relative clauses constructions. Most of the papers collected here react in some way to Kayne’s (1994) proposal to handle relative clauses in terms of determiner complementation and raising of the relativized nominal. The editors provide a thorough introduction of these proposals, their background and motivations, arguments for and against. There are detailed studies in the syntax and the semantics of relative clauses constructions in Latin, Ancient Greek, Romanian, Hindi, (Old) English, Old High German, (dialects of) Dutch, Turkish, Swedish, and Japanese. The book should be of interest to any linguist working within generative syntax.

This book presents a cross-section of recent generative research into the syntax of relative clauses constructions. Most of the papers collected here react in some way to Kayne's (1994) proposal to handle relative clauses in terms of determiner complementation and raising of the relativized nominal. The editors provide a thorough introduction of these proposals, their background and motivations, arguments for and against. There are detailed studies in the syntax and the semantics of relative clauses constructions in Latin, Ancient Greek, Romanian, Hindi, (Old) English, Old High German, (dialects of) Dutch, Turkish, Swedish, and Japanese. The book should be of interest to any linguist working within generative syntax.

Explaining the acquisition and processing of relative clauses has long challenged psycholinguistics researchers. The current volume presents a collection of chapters that consider the acquisition of relative clauses with a particular focus on function, typology, and language processing. A diverse range of theoretical approaches and languages are bought to bear on the acquisition of this construction type, making the volume unique in its coverage. The volume will appeal to students and scholars whose interest lies in the acquisition and processing of syntax with a particular focus on complex sentences in crosslinguistic and functionalist perspective.

Patterns of relative clause formation tend to vary according to the typological properties of a language. Highly polysynthetic languages tend to have fully nominalized relative clauses and no relative pronouns, while other typologically diverse languages tend to have relative clauses which are similar to main or independent clauses. Languages of the Americas, with their rich genetic diversity, have all been under the influence of European languages, whether Spanish, English or Portuguese, a situation that may be expected to have influenced their grammatical patterns. The present volume focuses on two tasks: The first deals with the discussion of functional principles related to relative clause formation: diachrony and paths of grammaticalization, simplicity vs. complexity, and formalization of rules to capture semantic-syntactic correlations. The second provides a typological overview of relative clauses in nine different languages going from north to south in the Americas.

Presents a comprehensive survey of historically attested relative clause constructions from a diachronic typological perspective. This title demonstrates how typology and historical linguistics can each benefit from attention to the other.

The architecture of the human language faculty has been one of the main foci of the linguistic research of the last half century. This branch of linguistics, broadly known as Generative Grammar, is concerned with the formulation of explanatory formal accounts of linguistic phenomena with the ulterior goal of gaining insight into the properties of the 'language organ'. The series comprises high quality monographs and collected volumes that address such issues. The topics in this series range from phonology to semantics, from syntax to information structure, from mathematical linguistics to studies of the lexicon.