Native Lower Sorbian, an endangered West Slavic minority language spoken in Germany, possesses a relative clause formation strategy employing the invariant relativizer
ak and optional resumption. The focus of this paper lies on the status of
ak. In other languages that have
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Native Lower Sorbian, an endangered West Slavic minority language spoken in Germany, possesses a relative clause formation strategy employing the invariant relativizer
ak and optional resumption. The focus of this paper lies on the status of
ak. In other languages that have them, invariant relativizers are drawn from the set of complementizers,
wh-words, or demonstratives.
ak seems to differ in that respect because it belongs to neither category. In this paper, I argue that
ak is not an outlier. Instead,
ak is a variant of the manner
wh-word
kak ‘how’ in its non-manner use as a complementizer. After I show how the complementizer
kak differs from the
wh-adverb
kak and that relative clauses in Native Lower Sorbian feature empty operator movement, I argue that the empty operator sitting in SpecCP triggers a rule partially deleting the complementizer
kak. More specifically, the rule elides the initial [k] of
kak, reducing it to
ak. This makes Native Lower Sorbian similar to Bern German or West Frisian, both of which also feature the partial deletion of a complementizer in the presence of a moved element in SpecCP. Furthermore, Native Lower Sorbian is yet another language where
how has a non-manner use.
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