Internally Headed Relative Clauses in Austronesian Languages

Abstract

It is well known that many Austronesian languages have head-initial and head-final relative clauses. This paper reports that the Atayalic language Seediq and the Philippine language Tagalog additionally have internally headed relative clauses. In this paper, I first identify the formal and structural differences among the three types of relative clause in these languages. In particular, I distinguish the head-final from the head-internal type by showing that the former exhibit evidence of remnant TP movement to [Spec, DP] from a [D CP] structure, as per Kayne’s (1994) proposal for head-final relative clause derivation. The head-internal variety, on the other hand, do not show evidence of movement and therefore qualify as internally headed relative clauses. For their derivation, I propose an analysis similar to Basilico (1996), in which the head nominal moves to a clause-internal position where it can be bound by an operator in [Spec, CP]. Support for this quantificational analysis of Seediq and Tagalog internally headed relative clauses is provided by the fact that parallel structures are employed in these languages for other constructions involving binding from external operators, including wh-in situ and clauses containing weakly quantified arguments.

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