Free relatives and "see"

[amir-zeldes]

Looking at free relatives in EWT, I see that there are almost no ccomp taking a WH pronoun (which makes sense, these are usually free relatives), but a notable exception is "see":

http://match.grew.fr/[email protected]&custom=60043fed5d550&eud=yes

Most of these treat the WH pronoun as an object inside an object clause, but I'm not sure I understand why they are being handled differently from "hear":

http://match.grew.fr/[email protected]&custom=600457b607ae1&eud=yes

Is this intentional or is one of these an error?

[nschneid]

Looks inconsistent but TBH I never understood all the details of free relatives.

[amir-zeldes]

OK, same question for object "why" with clause:

http://match.grew.fr/[email protected]&custom=6004868b23544&eud=yes

EWT has these as advcl where "why" is mark, but I think that's the wrong reading. advcl with mark should be something like this case:

• We know because/mark we checked/advcl

But I think this is actually a free relative:

• We know why/obj you did/acl:relcl it

It's short for:

• We know the reason/obj why/advmod you did/acl:relcl it

The same way the normal wh-free relative works:

• We know what/obj you did/acl:relcl
• We know that/obj which/obj you did/acl:relcl

So I think the "why" cases should also be free relatives. I can do this in GUM, which also has incorrect ones, but I shudder at introducing yet another difference between the TBs...

[sylvainkahane]

I think that these clauses with "see" or "know" are indirect interrogative clauses and the pronoun is an (indirect) interrogative pronoun. I think that pronouns for direct and indirect interrogatives, as well as for free relatives, are similar in English, but it is not the case in every language (some differences in French for instance).