Agreement mismatches in relative clauses and related structures

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. André Meinunger
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 465345509

The project focuses on relative clause constructions in which relative clauses (RCs) appear as attributes to 1st or 2nd person personal pronouns, for example Ihr, die malen lernt, besucht jede Ausstellung (i). These structures are little studied, do not figure in regular reference grammar books, but are meanwhile attested experimentally. In the relevant structures, the morphological features diverge between head pronoun (2nd Ps) in the matrix clause and the subject (3rd Ps) and the finite verb (2nd Ps) in the RC. The experimental survey will be aimed at (i) appositive RS (see above), (ii) clefts: Ihr seid es, die malen lernen/??lernt; and (iii) selected restrictive RC structures: Wir sind die einzigen, die unseren/ihren Sohn versorgen (especially under the controversial binding of the possessive pronoun). German, Polish and Italian will be investigated, since these languages have specific properties, differing in the relevant points, and thus promising insights: pro-drop property; the type of relativiser (complementizer or relative pronoun); syncretisms; resumptive pronoun setting; the occurrence of genus (gender) marking (on relative pronoun or verb, respectively). Since the state of research is very different for each language, different approaches and weightings result in the heuristics for aspired data collection (classical questioning/assessment of structures on Likert scales, psycho-linguistic experiments: self-paced reading, eye tracking, event-related potentials). A synthesis of the results aims at a coherent picture on different languages and grammatical processes. Besides the ostensibly empirical collection of concrete data, the theoretical goal is to contribute to the syntactic analysis of RC-like constructions and to the morpho-syntactic analysis of congruence or agreement

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Italy, Poland
• Cooperation Partners: Professorin Dr. Joanna Blaszczak (†); Dr. Ewa Trutkowski