Light-headed relative clauses in Teramano

Abstract

We investigate a rich but less studied component of the relative clause system in Teramano, one of the Upper Southern Italian languages. We focus on light-headed relative clauses⎯relative clauses that lack a full nominal head and are introduced by only a Determiner-like or pronominal “light head.” We also briefly describe headed relative clauses in Teramano since the morphosyntactic features they exhibit are relevant for the investigation of light-headed relative clauses. Last, we highlight commonalities and differences between light-headed relative clauses in Teramano and Italian. Our paper provides the first systematic in-depth description of light-headed relative clauses in an Upper Southern Italian language that we are aware of, contributes to the knowledge of Teramano, the study of light-headed relative clauses crosslinguistically, and the ongoing investigation of microvariation among Italian and Italian languages.