the syntax and semantics of relativization and quantification

2
The most immediate puzzle of Quechua relative clauses, which has drawn attention
in the past syntactic literature, is presented by the internally headed relatives.
In this construction, illustrated in (1.1), the noun phrase which is modified by the
embedded clause appears within the clause itself. In (1.1), the head is waka ‘cow’.
(1.1) [Juan-pa waka ranti-sqa-n]-qa yuraq-mi
Juan-gen cow buy-nm-3sg-top white-evid
‘The cow that Juan bought was white.’
ka-ra-n.
be-past-3sg
This construction raises the question of how the head is understood to be the
element which is modified by the relative clause. Syntactic studies which have
addressed this question specifically in Quechua include [Cole, Harbert & Hermon
1982], [Cole 1987a], [Lefebvre & Muysken 1982], and [Lefebvre & Muysken 1988]. A
natural analysis which has been proposed by these authors for Quechua and also in
other work on a variety of languages is that the head must raise out of the clause
at some level of structure in order to achieve a sisterhood relationship with its
modifier. Head-raising analyses of relative clauses date back to Vergnaud’s [1974]
work on French, and have been more recently revitalized by Kayne [1994] as part
of his Antisymmetry framework. Bianchi [1995, 1999, 2002] and others have further
developed a theory of relative clauses in Kayne’s framework.
This dissertation presents a new theory of head-raising in Quechua, based on
both syntactic and semantic evidence. On the semantic end, I show in Chapter 2
that certain quantified internal heads take interpretive scope over the entire relative
clause. I also show that some typologically unusual properties of Quechua relative
clause heads point to the same structural conclusion. In particular, Quechua relative