The Syntax of Relative Clauses

Abstract

Modern Irish has two productive Relative Clause strategies,¹ which, following traditional usage, I shall call the Direct and the Indirect Relative respectively. The two strategies exhibit certain differences of morphology, which will be discussed in due course, but the central difference between the two is that the Indirect Relative involves retention of a pronoun at the site of the relativized constituent inside the relative clause, while the Direct Relative involves removal of the relativized constitutent; that is, there is an intuitively felt ‘gap’ at the relativization site. As one might expect on the basis of the work of Keenan and Comrie (1977), the pronoun-retaining Indirect Relative is used when the relativized constituent is relatively inaccessible to its matched constituent outside the clause. One aspect of the accessibility relation has to do with the grammatical relation borne by the relativized NP within the relative clause.