Recategorizing C

Abstract

Abstract Recent research explicitly addresses the fact that C is a category defined on the basis of its function (“complementation”), encompassing a number of elements whose intrinsic categorial content varies greatly. We consider declarative complementizers, of the form attested in Indo-European languages, and argue that they are pronouns, unifying the complementizer function with the pronominal one. In this framework, complement clauses are projections of nominals and exhibit a structure similar to free relatives. The proposal is that the pronoun in its complementizer function heads the constituent merging with the selecting predicate. This approach has implications for the articulated CP structure, reducing the left periphery to positions that are related to V (e.g., modality), whilst allowing for dislocation of constituents for scope purposes.