The semantic variability of German free relative clauses

Like in most European languages, relative clauses in German an English can be divided into two major types depending on whether they are embedded under a noun phrase or not. The first type is called headed relative (HR), the second is called free relative (FR). (1) Der Braten, den Arlo zubereitet hat, schmeckt hervorragend (HR) The roast that Arlo prepared has tastes delicious ‘The roast Arlo prepared tastes delicious’ (2) Was Arlo zubereitet hat, schmeckt hervorragend (FR) What Arlo prepared has tastes delicious ‘What Arlo prepared tastes delicious’ Despite the fact that there is no overt nominal element present in FRs, many contexts support the intuition that they adopt interpretations similar to those of noun phrases. In many cases, it is possible to paraphrase the FR either by referential nominalizations, or by a noun phrase / pronoun heading a restrictive relative clause which is the direct counterpart to the paraphrased FR. (3) Was der Angeklagte vor Gericht aussagte, entsprach nicht der Wahrheit What the accused before court stated corresponded not theDAT truth ‘What the culprit claimed before the court did not correspond to the truth (4) Die Aussage des Angeklagten vor Gericht entsprach nicht der Wahrheit The statement theGEN accused before court corresponded not theDAT truth ‘The culprit’s claim before the court did not correspond to the truth (1) Ich akzeptierte, was er mir angeboten hatte I accepted what he meDAT offered had ‘I accepted what he had offered to me’ (2) Ich akzeptierte sein Angebot ‘I accepted his offer’ FRs also pattern with NPs in their flexibility with respect to the semantic type of their denotation. As the previous examples have shown, one possible denotation is that of a definite description- that is, the whole construction refers to a particular object by means of its descriptive content, thereby presupposing that one and only one object matching the description exists in the universe of discourse. In order to account for this similarity to definite noun phrases, Jacobson (1995) proposes an analysis along the lines of Link’s (1983) uniform semantics for singular and plural definites. In some cases however, free relatives seem to be able to adopt an indefinite meaning. In English FR