On participial relatives and complementizer D⁰: A case study in Hebrew and French

A new facet of D⁰ is brought to light in this paper; its ability to act as the relative complementizer of participial clauses. Participial relatives in certain languages (e.g., Hebrew) are headed by a particle homophonous to the definite article. The particular behavior of these relatives and their cross-linguistic distribution indicate that this particle is a complementizer-like D⁰. Moreover, various considerations suggest that participial relatives in other languages (e.g., French), which do not show an overt element of this type, also contain an equivalent (null) D⁰. The participial clause in both cases is shown to be an AGRP which does not have an internally determined tense. Consequently, it is proposed that it is the presence or absence of tense that defines the choice between C⁰ and D⁰ as the relative complementizer. Finally, as participial relatives seem to involve an operator-variable chain, like regular relatives, the licensing of the variable in an apparently Caseless position is briefly discussed.