Against complementizers

In this programmatic work we intend to explore the possibility that the way we conceive complementation in Romance and Germanic has to be entirely rethought. The basic proposal is that what we call ‘complementizer’ and place in the head of C° is actually not a complementizer but a sort of determiner-like category which is also found in relative clauses, as proposed in Manzini and Savoia (2003, 2011) and Kayne (2010a). However, unlike the previous accounts, we propose that as in relative clauses the ‘complementizer’ partially spells out either the nominal element internal to the relative/complement clause or the external nominal modified by the relative/complement clause itself. The different position of the ‘complementizer’ derives the well-known presence and lack of asymmetries in word orders between main and subordinate clauses in respectively German and Italian. In addition, we propose a solution for the difference in terms of extraction from relative and complement clauses, which has remained up to now unaddressed, and thus problematic, in the previous accounts that equate complement to relative clauses. The empirical testing ground is mainly limited to a selection of Romance and Germanic languages, namely Italian, Italian varieties, English, and German.