Who(m), Which and the Humanness of the Relative Pronoun in English

This paper concerns the different forms of the relative pronoun in English, particularly who(m) and which. It explains the relationship between the two forms and provides a Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993) analysis based on separation and late insertion. It claims that the “two” relative pronouns are actually allomorphs of a single relative pronoun morpheme and that the forms are morphosyntactically determined after (overt) syntax. It also contends a common dichotomy between who(m) and which is not a property of the relative pronoun per se, but is predictable from the antecedent. To support this claim, a cross-linguistic survey of relative pronouns is conducted. One finding is that humanness is not a feature frequently used to determine relative pronoun forms throughout languages.