Dialectal doubling and the syntax of relative clauses

This research project aims at providing a principled account of the nature and limits of (micro)variation in Germanic (long-distance) relative clauses and related constructions in general, and of the dialectal pronoun doubling construction in particular. The latter construction sheds light on many outstanding questions within generative grammar, concerning, among other things, the syntax of relative clauses, the phenomenon of (morpho)syntactic doubling and the nature/structure of relative pronouns. Altho ugh the point of departure of this research project is Dutch, the investigation will be approached from both a micro- and a macro-comparative perspective. More specifically, microvariation in relative clauses and related constructions in the West-Germanic language Dutch - as found in the SAND (Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects) project - will be compared with microvariation in similar constructions in the North-Germanic/ Scandinavian languages. To that end, part of the research will ideally be spent a t the Center for Advanced Studies in Theoretical Linguistics (CASTL) at the University of Tromsø, Norway, from which the ScanDiaSyn (Scandinavian Dialect Syntax) and the NorMS (Nordic Microcomparative Syntax) projects are supervised and directed.