Wh-pronoun and complementizer relative clauses: unintegration features in conversational Polish
Wh-pronoun and complementizer relative clauses: unintegration features in conversational Polish

Summary/Abstract: The paper examines syntactic features of non-canonical relativization in spoken Polish that loosen the structural integration of two types of relative clauses – one introduced by the complementizer co, the other by the wh-pronoun który. The resulting unintegration holds between the head NP and the co/który clause and contrasts with the integrated structure of canonical relatives. I discuss the range of unintegration features observed for both types in corpus data and indicate the distinct quantitative extents to which the two types are unintegrated. Although the nature of spontaneous conversation is such that it imposes some loosening of structural cohesion in both types, co clauses (especially non-subject relative clauses) are far more frequently unintegrated than który clauses. Also, co clauses depart functionally from the canonical relative structure in that the complementizer co serves functions other than that of a straightforward relativizer, namely it has conjunction-like uses (temporal, spatial, and general conjunction), indicating an expansion of the categorial status of co. The observed unintegration of Polish conversational relatives is in line with previous analyses of the syntax of unplanned speech (e.g. Miller and Weinert 1998)

• Details
• Contents