Non-restrictive relatives are not orphans

According to a ‘radical orphanage’ approach, non-restrictive relative clauses are not part of the syntactic representation of the sentence that contains them. It is an appealing view, and seems to capture some important properties of non-restrictive relative clauses. Focusing mainly on empirical shortcomings, this paper aims to show that the appeal of such approaches is illusory. It also outlines an empirically superior ‘syntactically integrated’ account.

Non-restrictive relative clauses in Arabic

English Linguistics Research ◽

10.5430/elr.v7n2p54 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 7 (2) ◽

pp. 54

Author(s):

Abdulrahman A Alqurashi

Keyword(s):

Relative Clause ◽

Preliminary Analysis ◽

Relative Clauses ◽

Modern Standard Arabic ◽

Standard Arabic ◽

Restrictive Relatives ◽

Modern Standard ◽

Minimalist Syntax

This paper discusses the syntax of non-restrictive relative clauses in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). It provides a thorough description of their structures and attempts to offer a preliminary analysis within the transformation framework: Minimalist syntax. Two relativization strategies are available for Arabic non-restrictive relative clauses. The first strategy is similar to that of definite restrictive relatives in which the relative clause is initiated by ʔallaðiwhich is a relative complementizer, whereas the second strategy is a unique one in which the relative clause is initiated by the special particle wa, appears to be a specifying coordinator, along with the complementizer ʔallaði. The paper also argues that De-Vries’s (2006) coordinate approach to appositive relatives can provide a straightforward account for some the facts of non-restrictive relative clauses in Arabic.

The Syntax of Appositive Relativization: On Specifying Coordination, False Free Relatives, and Promotion

Linguistic Inquiry ◽

10.1162/ling.2006.37.2.229 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 37 (2) ◽

pp. 229-270 ◽

Cited By ~ 41

Author(s):

Mark de Vries

Keyword(s):

Relative Clauses ◽

Free Relatives ◽

Internal Syntax ◽

Appositive relative clauses differ in some essential respects from restrictive relative clauses. I argue that appositive relatives and appositions can be put together as a third class of coordination denoting specification. Thus, an appositive relative is a specifying conjunct to the visible antecedent. It is a semifree relative with a pronominal head that is normally empty. Therefore, its internal syntax is equivalent to that of restrictive relatives; hence, there is one syntax for both types of relative clauses. In essence, it is the context of specifying coordination that accounts for the different behavior of appositive relatives. In the light of this analysis, the properties of appositive relatives (as opposed to restrictive relatives) are systematically reviewed.

To Raise or Not to Raise: the Case of Finnish Restrictive Relative Clauses

Nordlyd ◽

10.7557/12.32 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 31 (4) ◽

Author(s):

Satu Manninen

Keyword(s):

Relative Clause ◽

Relative Clauses ◽

Advantages And Disadvantages ◽

Possessive Constructions ◽

Relative clause constructions have received very little attention in Finnish grammars. The purpose of this paper is to provide some tools for distinguishing between restrictive and appositive relatives in Finnish, and to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the “standard” and raising analyses of restrictive relatives in that language. It shows that both lines of analysis are problematic for the analysis of a highly inflectional language like Finnish. The paper also contains a brief account of relative clause extraposition constructions: it points out problems in Kayne’s (1994) and Bianchi’s (1999) analysis of such data, and proposes instead that extraposition constructions, just like possessive constructions, contain a D head selecting another DP as its complement.

On relative clauses and prosodic phrasing in Ciwandya

ZAS Papers in Linguistics ◽

10.21248/zaspil.55.2011.411 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 55 ◽

pp. 121-139

Author(s):

Al Mtenje

Keyword(s):

Empirical Research ◽

Relative Clauses ◽

Syntactic Structure ◽

Prosodic Phrasing ◽

Bantu Languages ◽

Bantu Language ◽

Prosodic Phrase ◽

The interaction between Syntax and Phonology has been one area of interesting empirical research and theoretical debate in recent years, particularly the question of the extent to which syntactic structure influences phonological phrasing. It has generally been observed that the edges of the major syntactic constituents (XPs) tend to coincide with prosodic phrase boundaries thus resulting in XPs like subject NPs, object NPs, Topic NPs, VPs etc. forming separate phonological phrases. Within Optimality Theoretic (OT) accounts, this fact has been attributed to a number of well-motivated general alignment constraints. Studies on relative clauses in Bantu and other languages have significantly contributed to this area of research inquiry where a number of parametric variations have been observed with regard to prosodic phrasing. In some languages, XPs which are heads of relatives form separate phonological phrases while in others they phrase with the relative clauses. This paper makes a contribution to this topic by discussing the phrasing of relatives in Ciwandya (a Bantu language spoken in Malawi and Tanzania). It shows that XPs which are heads of restrictive relative clauses phrase with their relative verbs, regardless of whether they are subjects, objects or other adjuncts. A variety of syntactic constructions are used to illustrate this fact. The discussion also confirms what has been generally observed in other Bantu languages concerning restrictive relatives with clefts and non-restrictive relative clauses. In both cases, the heads of the relatives phrase separately. The paper adopts an OT analysis which has been well articulated and defended in Cheng & Downing (2007, 2010, to appear) Downing & Mtenje (2010, 2011) to account for these phenomena in Ciwandya.

Extraposition of restrictive relative clauses

10.1093/oso/9780198723783.003.0003 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Adriana Cardoso

Keyword(s):

Structural Analysis ◽

Relative Clause ◽

Relative Clauses ◽

Point Of View ◽

Theoretical Point ◽

Prepositional Phrases ◽

European Portuguese ◽

Restrictive Relatives ◽

Definiteness Effect

Chapter 3 deals with the extraposition of restrictive relative clauses. It demonstrates that different languages and different stages of the same language may differ with respect to the three main properties of extraposition: definiteness effect; extraposition from pre-verbal positions; and extraposition from prepositional phrases. The main descriptive findings are: (1) that earlier stages of Portuguese contrast sharply with Contemporary European Portuguese with respect to the extraposition of restrictive relative clauses; and (2) the extraposition of restrictive relatives in earlier stages of Portuguese is, to a large extent, Germanic-like, unlike Contemporary European Portuguese. From a theoretical point of view, it is argued that the same structural analysis cannot alone derive the contrasting properties of restrictive relative clause extraposition. To account for the variation found in the diachronic and cross-linguistic dimensions, it is claimed that the extraposition of restrictive relatives might involve two different structures: specifying coordination plus ellipsis and VP-internal stranding.

Proceedings of the International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar ◽

Non-restrictive relative clauses in Construction Based HPSG

10.21248/hpsg.2004.2 ◽

2004 ◽

Author(s):

Doug Arnold

Keyword(s):

Relative Clause ◽

Relative Clauses ◽

Restrictive Relatives ◽

Theoretical Apparatus ◽

Significant Point

This paper presents an account of English non-restrictive (ˋappositive') relative clauses (NRCs) in the framework of ˋconstruction based' HPSG. Specifically, it shows how the account of restrictive relative clause constructions presented in Sag (1997) can be extended to provide an account of the syntax and semantics of NRCs and of the main differences between NRCs and restrictive relatives. The analysis reconciles the semantic intuition that NRCs behave like independent clauses with their subordinate syntax. A significant point is that, in contrast with many other approaches, it employs only existing, independently motivated theoretical apparatus, and requires absolutely no new structures, features, or types.

Production and processing of restrictive relative clauses in pragmatically appropriate context

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e520562012-543 ◽

2009 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

William R. Battinich ◽

William H. Levine

Keyword(s):

Relative Clauses ◽

Restrictive Relative Clauses

Fossilized mistakes in Spanish relative clauses learned by Chinese students

IRAL - International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching ◽

10.1515/iral-2021.0062 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 0 (0) ◽

Author(s):

María Guijarro Sanz

Keyword(s):

Teaching Methods ◽

Relative Clauses ◽

Chinese Students ◽

Construction Grammar ◽

Cognitive Grammar ◽

The Impact

Abstract This article demonstrates how Cognitive Grammar and Construction Grammar can prevent Chinese students learning Spanish from fossilizing mistakes in restrictive relative clauses at the A2-B1 level of the European Framework of Reference for Languages. To address this issue, first, relative clauses in Spanish and Chinese were contrasted and, second, tailored solutions based on Cognitive Grammar were proposed. Among the cognitive based tailored solutions, certain geometry forms, colours and basic mathematics metaphors were compared with syntactic characteristics such as noun order, subordination hierarchy or resumption. To elucidate the impact of such teaching methods, an experiment with 74 Chinese students was performed. The results indicate that the efficacy of the proposed materials is statistically significant and as such, the Chinese students avoid fossilized mistakes while producing subject, object and locative relative clauses in Spanish.