Re: Mandarin Relative Clauses?

On Fri, 22 Dec 2000, John Cowan wrote:

> SMITH,MARCUS ANTHONY wrote:
>
> > Frankly, I don't believe that this sentence is an example of extraposition
> > due to a heavy relative clause. I think instead that it is a necessity of
> > copular sentences. Note that the "light" relative you used before also
> > cannot function as the subject of a copular sentence.
> >
> > *Who doesn't work is a lazy person.
> > Whoever doesn't work is a lazy person.
> >
> > *Who sings well is a talented person.
> > Whoever sings well is a talented person.
>
> Granted.  But:
>
>     What you see is what you get.
>     Whatever you see is what you get.
>
>     When you fall 50 m, you are dead.
>     Whenever you fall 50 m, you are dead.
This last pair is a different situation altogether, since the "when"
clause is a temporal adjunct rather than an argument.

> These *are* semantically different, but both members of each pair
> are grammatical.  So it is "who" that is different, not just
> copulatives.
The difference, once again, lies in the fact that "who" requires a
restrictor, while "what" does not. You can see this reflected in the fact
that "who" can serve as a relative pronoun while "what" cannot.

I saw the man who followed you home.
*I saw the dog what followed you home.

The proper form of that last sentence would be

I saw the dog that followed you home.

Compare that with

*That followed you home is a stray dog.
It is a stray dog that followed you home.

This is the same pattern as "who". I doubt that this is a coincidence.

Marcus