The Linguistics Circle presents a seminar by Maris Camilleri (University of Vienna) entitled 'Relative clause types in Maltese'. The seminar will be held on Friday 7 April at 12:00 in Room 214, M.A. Vassalli Conference Centre - Gateway Building (GW214).
Abstract
This talk will take us on a descriptive tour across a number of different types of relative clauses available in Maltese, and a number of strategies which the language makes use of, in order to syntactically construct such clause types. We will specifically highlight the split which exists, as well as the lack of it, between complementiser li vs. wh-pronoun strategies, and amongst other things illustrate how a type of wh-pronoun relative clause can permit internally-headed antecedents, and that counter to claims in the literature (predominantly Caponigro (2003) and subsequent publications), we demonstrate how Maltese free relative clauses are not constrained to the wh-pronoun strategy. Rather, definite free relative clauses can also be introduced by the complementiser strategy.