1 The definitive version is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com. See https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-968X.12137. On the third type of headed relative clause in Post-classical and Early Byzantine Greek 1 Klaas Bentein and Metin Bağrıaçık Ghent University Abstract: It has been claimed that Archaic and Classical Greek had two main types of headed relative clauses: (i) postnominal externally headed relative clauses, and (ii) internally headed relative clauses (Perna 2013a, b; Fauconnier 2014; Probert 2015). In this article, we take a closer look at the semantic and syntactic properties of the second category in Post-classical and Early Byzantine Greek (I-VIII AD). Analysing a corpus of documentary texts, we show that a good deal of the examples in this period do not correspond to the established properties of internally headed relative clauses in the history of Greek. This leads us to propose that at least some examples that are apparently internally headed should be revised as a third relative clause type, namely prenominal externally headed relative clauses. We hypothesise that such examples came into existence through form-function reanalysis of internally headed relative clauses, a process which we suggest took place already in the Classical period (V–IV BC). In the last part of our article, we investigate the motivation for the choice of internally headed and prenominal externally headed relative clauses over the postnominal ones: we show that such examples occur strikingly frequently in formal texts such as contracts, petitions and formal letters. We propose that in such texts, internally headed and prenominal externally headed relative clauses, which are syntactically more complex, function as ‘transparent signifiers’ (Hodge & Kress 1988), serving as a marker of a higher social level. Keywords: relativisation; internally headed relative clause; prenominal/postnominal externally headed relative clause; Post-classical and Early Byzantine Greek; documentary writing 1. Introduction In a recent article, Fauconnier (2014) has drawn attention to the existence of two major strategies of headed relative clause formation 2 in Ancient Greek, 3 which she refers to with 1 We are grateful to two anonymous referees for Transactions of the Philological Society for their constructive comments and insightful suggestions, which have substantially improved our initial submission. Needless to say, we take sole responsibility for all the remaining inadequacies. Klaas Bentein’s research was funded by The Flemish Fund for Scientific Research (Grant Nr 12B7218N), the Center for Hellenic Studies, and the European Research Council (Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, Starting Grant Nr 756487). Metin Bağrıaçık’s research was supported by HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) grant “MuMiL-EU” (HERA.15.029). 2 Ancient Greek headed relative clauses have been subject to a great number of studies, among which see Probert (2015) for Archaic Greek; Monteil (1963), Adams (1972), Brunel (1977) for Archaic and Classical Greek; Biraud (1980), Chanet (1980), Pieters (1980), Rijkbsaron (1981), Stelter (2004: 28-139), Perna (2013a, b), Luján (2014) for Classical Greek; Vierros (2003) for Early Post-classical Greek; Kriki (2013) for Post-classical Greek; Du Toit (1986, 2015, 2016), Boyer (1988), Culy (1989), Petersen (2001) and Kirk (2012: 177-224) for New Testament Greek. 3 Fauconnier’s (2014) study is concerned specifically with Classical Greek (V–IV BC). Studies on later periods of Greek (for which, see fn. 2), however, generally assume the existence of the same types of headed relative clauses. We, too, will start this article by assuming that the syntax of relative clauses in Classical and Post-classical Greek is similar.