Persistence and renewal in the relative pronoun paradigm: The case of Italian
Anna Giacalone Ramat
In his typological analysis of relative clauses (=RC), Comrie (1989: 149; 2002, 2003) notes that the pronoun (=RP) type is widespread in languages Europe but cross-linguistically quite rare. Indeed, he points outs examples found outside nearly always turn out to have arisen under influence some European languages. Thus relative-pronoun gives “the impression a arises rarely spontaneously, which once it has arisen, favoured construction for borrowing” (Comrie 2003: 20).
Folia Linguistica Historica