English Free Relative Clause Constructions : From a Constraint-Based Perspective

Like other Indo-European languages, English also employs a particular type of relative clause constructions, the so-called free-relative constructions, exemplified by the phrase like what Kim ate. This paper provides a constraint-based approach to these constructions. The paper begins with surveying on the properties of the construction. We will discuss two types of free relatives, their lexical restrictions, nominal properties, and their behavior with respect to extraposition and piped piping, and finiteness. Following this, we sketch basic theory of the constraint-based grammar, Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar(HPSG) which is of relevance in this paper. As the main part of this paper, we then present our constraint-based analysis couched upon this framework.