In the literature, there has been the unified theory of relativization and topicalization as proposed in Kuno (1976) and Chomsky (1977), among others, according to which both relativization and topicalization are viewed as involving the formation of an operator-variable construction due to the island effects they both exhibit as in the overt movement in wh-questions. Despite this similarity, this thesis shows that there is an asymmetry between adjunct relatives and adjunct topic constructions, and that there is an asymmetry between relatives of the primary adjuncts and those of the secondary adjuncts. These asymmetries cast doubt on the unified theory of relativization and topicalization.
The general objective of this thesis is to formulate a theory of relativization and topicalization which is capable of accounting for their differences without jeopardizing the overt syntactic constraints they obey as two instances of overt-movement.
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