Arrondissement Leuven, Bélgica
This article aims to provide an analysis for a curious fact about reduced relative clauses in Standard English: while full relative clauses permit all forms of inflection, reduced relative clauses are restricted to passive and progressive inflections. This puzzle is explained by claiming that, while full relative clauses are comprised of both phases of the clausal spine, reduced relative clauses are comprised solely of the clause‐internal phase. Following the claim that the clause‐internal phase in English in fact extends as far as the progressive aspectual layer (Harwood 2013, 2015; Wurmbrand 2013, 2014; Ramchand & Svenonius 2014; Aelbrecht & Harwood 2015) this fully accounts for the inflectional restrictions on reduced relative clauses in Standard English.