Donati et al. (2022) aim at supporting the theoretical and empirical claims in Donati and Cecchetto 2011 about the grammar and free relative clauses by responding to the new data and criticism presented in Caponigro 2019. I critically examine the data and arguments in Donati et al. 2022, provide new data and arguments against the core theoretical proposal and the analyses advanced in Donati and Cecchetto 2011 and endorsed in Donati et al. 2022, and suggest a different approach, based on Citko 2008, Ott 2011, and Chomsky 2013, 2015. My overall conclusion is that there are theoretical reasons and rich crosslinguistic evidence supporting the view that the grammar allows for free relative clauses that are introduced by varieties of wh -phrases, rather than just wh -words, pace Donati and Cecchetto 2011 and Donati et al. 2022.

I argue that the version of phrase structure theory proposed by Donati and Cecchetto (2011) falls short of accounting for the attested patterns of free relative clauses not only in English but crosslinguistically in general. In particular, I show that free relative clauses can be introduced not only by wh -words like what or where , which is what Donati and Cecchetto predict, but also by wh -phrases like what books or whatever books and their equivalents in other languages, which Donati and Cecchetto explicitly predict not to be possible.