Pseudo-relative clauses and "Pseudo" pseudo-relative clauses

Abstract

This paper discusses relative clauses in Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian and Bulgarian, with some comparisons to English and French. It adopts much of the terminology used in the book (Mel’čuk 2021), including governor and image, and discusses differences in relativizer that arise when the governor is a noun vs. when it is certain kinds of non-noun; it connects these differences with different behavior of anaphoric pronouns. The paper nevertheless argues for maintaining the term pseudo-relative in its older meaning (the French type Le voilà qui arrive ‘Here he is arriving’) rather than Mel’čuk’s usage to mean a relative construction that seems to have no expressed governor/antecedent.