The puzzling nuanced status of who free relative clauses in English: a follow-up to Patterson and Caponigro (2015)

R. Stockwell, C. Schütze

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Abstract

This squib challenges Patterson & Caponigro's (2015, this journal) claim that there are few acceptable free relative clauses with who. We show that free relatives with who are generally acceptable when they are ‘transparent’ free relatives or complements of a copula, and add further nuance to their findings concerning how the degree of acceptability of free relatives with who varies according to positional factors.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)185-202
Number of pages18
JournalEnglish Language and Linguistics
Volume26
Issue number1
Early online date9 Feb 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished (in print/issue) - 1 Mar 2022

Keywords

  • standard free relatives
  • transparent free relatives
  • degradation of who free relatives
  • wh-words
  • copular clauses

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