ABSTRACT
Two opposite views on the nature of syntactic rules which are often implicitly or explicitly assumed are the idea that syntactic rules are merely 'structure dependent', and the idea that they are 'function dependent'. It is our intention here to show, in the first place, that a number of non-trivial properties of the relative construction in Italian follow from the general assumptions of the Extended Standard Theory (EST), as espoused most recently in Chomsky, and, in particular, that such properties are explained by the strict structure dependent interpretation of syntactic rules. We also intend to show that the universal conditions proposed by K & C and collectively known as the 'Primary Relativization Constraint' are, for Italian, at least partly incorrect, and that, where they are a correct 'description' of the facts, they follow, for the relevant part, as special cases from the independently motivated principles of EST.
