Open Access

Eric Fuß, Günther Grewendorf

• In the present-day Germanic languages, free relatives (FRs) share formal properties with indirect question in that both constructions are introduced by w-pronouns. However, at least in German (and historical stages of a larger set of languages, including English), there is an additional pattern which involves the use of d-pronouns such as German der/die/das ‘that.masc./fem./neut.’, which typically introduce headed relative clauses. Focusing on presentday German, this paper shows that d-FRs are set apart from w-FRs by a number of properties including syntactic distribution in the matrix clause, behavior with respect to matching effects, inventory of pronominal forms, and semantic interpretation. From these observations, it is concluded that d-FRs should not be analyzed on a par with w-FRs. More precisely, we argue that d-FRs are in fact regular headed (restrictive) relative clauses where the relative pronoun has been deleted under identity with a demonstrative antecedent. This apparent instance of syntactic haplology is then analyzed as resulting from the same mechanism that eliminates copies/traces in movement dependencies.