On Saturday 29 Jan 2005 18:05 pm, Richard Hudson wrote:
> Fascinating - your judgement confirms what I thought. Well, what's
> the structure (1) (repeated from below)? What's the 's doing attached
> to "think", given that this is part of the relative clause?
> (1) someone who you think's name is Tio is about to get his ass
> kicked. Dick

As compared to:

(1') someone whose name you think is Tio ...

There is a comparable situation with a question:

(2) Who do you think's name is Tio?
(2') Whose name do you think is Tio?

conversely (for me):

(3) *Peter who you think's book is good ...
(3') Peter whose book you think is good ...
(4) Who do you think's book is good?
(4') Whose book do you think is good?

If I understand your view correctly, 'S isa (possessive) pronoun. In (1) 
it depends on /think/, whereas /who/ and /name/ depend on /'s/ itself. 
So far so good. From this, the extraction can simply 'target' 
either /who/ or /'s/. If the target is /who/ then /'s/ is left 
'stranded' as it were and phonologically attaches to /think/ in virtue 
of it being the preceding word. If /'s/ is the target then its 
dependents necessarily 'tag along' and /'s/ phonologically attaches 
to /who/ as 'normal'.

There are consequences to this, of course:
A) What is the lexical status of WHOSE? - given that none of the other 
relative/interrogative pronouns have an equivalent form, I would 
suggest that there is no such form. It is simply an orthographic 
artefact representing "who's".
B) What is /who/ extractee of? - considering that each relevant wh-word 
(along with its dependent (pro)noun) can be extracted independently of 
'S, it seems reasonable that it is extractee of 'S.
C) Arising from (B), what conditions the choice between extracting the 
wh-word or 'S, and what effects (if any) arise syntactically and 
semantically? - the type of relative (and possibly appositive) clause 
may be relevant.

With (C) in mind, it strikes me that there is a difference between (1) 
and (1'). The former seems to prefer a restrictive interpretation, 
whereas the latter prefers a non-restrictive (maybe appositive) 
reading. This might account for my judgements of (3) and (3') since 
'Peter' is already fully identified.

Hoping there's some sense to picked out of that

Dylan

-- 
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little 
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." 
                                  -Benjamin Franklin