FOR 1783:  Relative Clauses

• Subject Area: Humanities
• Term: from 2011 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 202630811

The Research Unit has the goal of developing linguistic analyses of relative clauses within theoretical grammar research. Though there is no precise or universally established definition of relative clauses that strictly demarcates them from other constructions and at the same time includes all the various subtypes, the constructions gathered under the term 'relative clause' have a set of common properties, which clearly indicate a natural distinction from other constructions and allow for coherent study.
For grammatical theory, relative clauses are of major interest due to the fact that they show a wide range of properties, which appear somewhat contradictory from the standpoint of current linguistic theories, and certain questions have been discussed for decades in linguistic literature, which have found satisfying solutions. Although there are numerous proposals for how to analyse these constructions, no single analysis has been able to cover the whole range of properties of this construction so far, and some lead to contradictory analyses of certain properties of relative clauses, both in individual languages and cross-linguistically.
Relative clauses therefore qualify for research within a broader context for many reasons. First, earlier theoretical work was generally limited to only a few types of relative clause in the broader sense. However, we are convinced that it is possible to answer the question of what constitute the formal and distinctive features of the construction only by comparing many different construction and function types. Second, many of the theoretical problems are connected to the correlation of form and function and are therefore classical 'interface' problems.
For that reason, the Research Unit will not only compare different construction and function types, but also investigate relative clauses with respect to all modules of grammar (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sentence processing etc.). This offers us the possibility of establishing the relevant interface configurations and their interrelationship in detail, thereby significantly strengthening our understanding of the building blocks of human languages.

• DFG Programme: Research Units

Projects

• Constraintbasierte Analyse von Relativsätzen im Englischen und Deutschen (Applicants Holler, Anke ;  Sailer, Manfred )
• Das Verstehen von Relativsätzen bei Sprachgesunden und Aphasikern (Applicant Bader, Markus )
• Der Erwerb (nicht)restriktiver Relativsätze im Deutschen (Applicant Schulz, Petra )
• Der Relativsatzzyklus: Zur Begründung der Variation in Relativsätzen des Italienischen und Portugiesischen (Applicants Poletto, Cecilia ;  Rinke, Esther )
• Die linke Peripherie von Relativsätzen (Applicant Weiß, Helmut )
• Prosodische Untersuchung der restriktiven und nicht-restriktiven Relativsätze (Applicant Féry, Caroline )
• Relativsätze (Applicant Zimmermann, Thomas E. )
• Relativsätze (Applicant Zimmermann, Thomas E. )
• Relativsätze in typologischer Sicht (Applicant Gippert, Jost )
• Relativsätze und Intensionalität (Applicant Zimmermann, Thomas E. )
• Semantische, pragmatische und prosodische Aspekte nicht-restriktiver Relativsätze (Applicants Féry, Caroline ;  Zimmermann, Thomas E. )
• Zur Syntax von w-Elementen in freien Relativsätzen (Applicant Grewendorf, Günther )

• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Thomas E. Zimmermann