On Italian relative complementizers and relative pronouns: rethinking grammaticalization

This chapter explores the syntactic status of relativizers, that is, what are standardly referred to as relative complementizers and relative pronouns, in Old and Modern Italian varieties and proposes a unified analysis for both types of items. It takes into account the ongoing debate regarding the categorial status of relativizers (Kayne 1975, 2008, 2010; Lehmann 1984; Manzini and Savoia 2003, 2011, among many others) and aims to show that what we call complementizers are not C° heads, as commonly assumed. Instead, we propose that both relative ‘complementizers’ and ‘pronouns’ have the same categorial status, that is, they are wh-items.