The functional nature of multiple wh- free relative clauses

Abstract

Multiple wh- free relative clauses are not only less attested cross-linguistically and have been much less studied than other types of clauses, but are also particularly puzzling. Focusing on multiple wh- free relative clauses in Romanian, we show that, despite being true free relative clauses, standard semantic analyses of free relative clauses with just a single wh-phrase (Jacobson 1995, Dayal 1996, Caponigro 2003, 2004) cannot be straightforwardly extended to multiple wh- free relative clauses. We propose a solution to this puzzle by providing the first compositional analysis of multiple wh- free relative clauses, which builds on previous work on single wh- free relative clauses and functional readings in interrogative and relative clauses.