Extraction from relative clauses in Swedish

Abstract

This dissertation presents an empirical study of extraction from relative clauses (ERC) in Swedish, where a phrase outside a relative clause (RC) is related to a gap or a resumptive pronoun inside the RC. The aim of the study is to provide an analysis of Swedish ERC-sentences based on spontaneously produced examples, questionnaire data, and elicitation and to clarify the interplay between information structure, discourse factors, and semantics on the one hand, and syntax on the other, in constraining ERC. The investigation draws on a collection of 270 naturally occurring ERC-sentences from spoken and written Swedish. The study shows that the syntactic dependency between the extracted phrase and the gap position inside the RC is an A ́-movement dependency, and that the RC in many ERC-sentences is a regular restrictive relative clause. From a discourse perspective, preposing in ERC is like preposing in the local clause and from att-clauses (that-clauses) in that it has the same discourse functions. With respect to the information structural role in the clause, the preposed phrase is often an aboutness topic. It can also be the information focus of the sentence, but not a scene-setter. An in-depth study of extraction of both adjuncts and arguments from RCs shows that A ́-movement from RCs is more restricted than A ́-movement in the local clause and from att-clauses. Evidence for this is that the semantic type of the extracted phrase affects extractability. Furthermore, wh-questions from RCs exhibit a pattern familiar from previous research on long extraction from embedded questions, suggesting that Swedish relative clauses constitute some type of weak island. The results and their implications for theories of islands are discussed in relation to recent proposals within the Minimalist program.