Basic English Syntax with Exercises

wh-relative

7.4.2 A comparison between relative and interrogative clauses

Whatever the relationship between interrogative and relative pronouns, it still needs to be acknowledged that there are different possibilities in both types. For example, in English although what is a perfectly good interrogative pronoun, its use as a relative pronoun is somewhat stigmatised, being seen as a characteristic of ‘uneducated’ speech. Dialects and sociolects that make use of ‘what relatives’ also do not use the relative pronoun in a way consistent with the interrogative pronoun. While what as an interrogative pronoun has a ‘non-human’ aspect to it in any dialect, in that you couldn’t point to a person and ask “what is that” without being offensive (“who is that” would obviously be more appropriate), what-relatives are often used to modify nouns with human referents:

7.4.2 A comparison between relative and interrogative clauses

In standard English, however, what-relatives are not accepted even for modifying nouns with non-human referents:

7.4.2 A comparison between relative and interrogative clauses

The only acceptable use of a what-relatives in standard English is in relatives which appear to lack a modified noun, what are sometimes called headless relatives:

7.4.2 A comparison between relative and interrogative clauses

There is another interesting difference between the use of interrogative and relative pronouns which shows that there is a possibility available for a relative pronoun that is not generally available with interrogatives. The restrictive relative is often noted to come in three different forms. One starts with a wh-relative pronoun and is called a wh-relative. Another starts with the complementiser that and is called a that-relative, and the third has nothing in front of the subject and is called a zero relative. These are exemplified below:

7.4.2 A comparison between relative and interrogative clauses

The wh-relative resembles an interrogative in more than just the fact that it is introduced by a wh-element, but also in the process which apparently forms the two structures. In both cases, the wh-element starts off inside the clause and moves to the specifier of CP. Thus, both types of clauses start with a wh-element and have a corresponding ‘gap’ in the position it was moved from. The gap contains the trace of the moved wh-element:

7.4.2 A comparison between relative and interrogative clauses

Another argument that that is not a relative pronoun in that-relatives is that it does not behave like a wh-element with respect to prepositions. Note the following two possibilities with a wh-relative:

7.4.2 A comparison between relative and interrogative clauses

The fact remains however, that there is still a gap in these relative clauses. What is the nature of this gap? In many ways it has exactly the same nature as the gap in a wh-relative. Consider this a little more closely: in a wh-relative, the relative clause acts as a modifier of the noun by relating the noun to a position in the relative clause itself. Thus in (93a) the noun is modified by being interpreted as the object of the verb in the relative clause, whereas in (93b) the noun is modified by being interpreted as the subject of the relative clause: