Languages & Linguistics
Relative Clause
A relative clause is a type of subordinate clause that provides additional information about a noun in the main clause. It typically begins with a relative pronoun such as "who," "which," or "that." Relative clauses are used to add descriptive or identifying details to a sentence and are common in many languages, including English.
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11 Key excerpts on "Relative Clause"
- Philip Baldi, Pierluigi Cuzzolin, Philip Baldi, Pierluigi Cuzzolin(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
A bibliogra-phy of studies on Latin Relative Clauses can be found in Lavency’s survey (1998: 131– 133), which summarizes his extensive research on the matter. For an analysis of Latin Relative Clauses within Indo-European languages, see the classic treatment in Delbrück (1900: 400–405) and, more recently, Kurzová (1981); for an analysis of Indo-European Relative Clauses from a typological perspective see also Lehmann (1980). 428 Anna Pompei basis of this taxonomy, Section 5 proposes a hypothesis for the reconstruc-tion of the diachronic development of Latin Relative Clauses (Section 5.1), whose main features are illustrated through the different stages in the history of Latin (Sections 5.2–5.4). 1.2. Definition of Relative Clauses In Latin, a Relative Clause can be defined as a subordinate clause introduced by a relative pronoun or a relative adverb. 2 If we try to analyze Latin Relative Clauses from a crosslinguistic perspective, however, it is necessary to start from a wider definition, which includes the whole set of constructions with the same function in the world’s languages. In some cases Latin itself uses participles as a strategy which is functionally equivalent to Relative Clauses introduced by a relative pronoun (Section 1.5.1). 1.2.1. Typological definitions Lehmann (1986: 664) remarks that when we speak about a Relative Clause, we necessarily refer to a nominal head. Therefore, he prefers to define the relative construction: A relative construction is a construction consisting of a nominal and a subordinate clause interpreted as attributively modifying the nominal. The nominal is called the head and the subordinate clause the Relative Clause. The attributive relation between head and Relative Clause is such that the head is involved in what is stated in the clause. More recently, de Vries (2002: 14) lists the following “defining proper-ties” of Relative Clauses: – A Relative Clause is subordinated.
eBook - PDFSouth Asian Languages
A Syntactic Typology
- Kārumūri V. Subbārāo(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
8 Noun modification: Relative Clauses 8.1 Introduction ‘A Relative Clause is a clause that modifies a phrasal constituent, generally a noun phrase. We call the noun phrase that is so modified the head of the Relative Clause’ (Riemsdijk 2006: 338). 1 A Relative Clause is a subordinate clause in which the embedded predicate may be [+finite] or [−finite]. Such a non-finite predicate may be participial or infinitival depending upon the language family that the specific language under consideration belongs to. In this chapter, we discuss three types of Relative Clauses 2 that are found in the South Asian subcontinent. They include: (i) externally headed Relative Clauses (EHRCs); (ii) Relative-CorRelative Clauses; and (iii) internally headed Relative Clauses (IHRCs) We shall briefly elaborate the above three types: (i) Externally headed Relative Clauses (EHRCs) EHRCs are of two subtypes: (a) the sentential-type; and (b) the non-finite type. (a) The sentential-type are post-nominal Relative Clauses with a finite embedded verb, as in Indo-Aryan. They do not have a null operator. (b) The non-finite type may either be pre-nominal or post-nominal. They both have a ‘null (covert) operator’ in the embedded rela- tive clause. They may either be participial as in Dravidian, Indo- Aryan, Mon-Khmer and Munda, or infinitival (nominalized) as in Tibeto-Burman languages. In fact it is the absence or presence of the covert operator that distinguishes the sentential-type from the non-finite type, in addition to other distinctive features such as: • the [+finite] nature of the embedded verb in the sentential-type and the [−finite] nature of the embedded verb in the non-finite type; and 263 264 Noun modification: Relative Clauses • the presence of an adposition (a postposition or a preposition) that indi- cates the grammatical relation of the embedded head with the embedded verb in the sentential-type and the absence of such adposition in the non-finite type.
eBook - PDF- Robert D. Holmstedt(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Eisenbrauns(Publisher)
Moreover, they provide a conve- nient and typologically grounded starting point for the analysis given in the corresponding chapters (listed in the table for each category) in this book. However, before we can consider these specific features and how they are manifested in Hebrew, we must consider the Relative Clause in general. In the next three sections, I will offer a definition of the Relative Clause with some basic examples and suggest two linguistic clines that isolate the Relative Clause within the larger grammatical categories to which it belongs. 6. The linguistic concept of parameters arises from the generative approach to lin- guistic variation. Within generative theory, the initial state of language—its innate, genetic condition within the human brain prior to language acquisition, and its characteristics—is referred to as Universal Grammar. Universal Grammar consists of principles and their pa- rameters (hence, the common name used for generative theory, Principles and Parameters Theory). The principles are the essential rules shared by all humans, and language variation is accounted for by positing that the principles have variable settings, their parameters. For an unimposing introduction, see Carnie 2006: 4–24; also Boeckx 2006: 53–60. 5 Relative Clauses: Orientation 1.1.1. Relative Definition The first issue to address is a basic cross-linguistic description of the rela- tive clause. Discussing the Relative Clause as a grammatical item implies that it can be distinguished by some features that exist in and only in all relatives in all languages. Determining the universal features of the relative is not an easy task, however: as table 1.2 illustrates, the syntactic features exhibited by Relative Clauses in a variety of languages are diverse (Downing 1978: 377). Clearly a universal characterization of the syntax of Relative Clauses is im- possible, since some of these features are mutually exclusive (a vs. b; c vs. d; f vs. g).
eBook - PDF- Rodney Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum, Brett Reynolds(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
12 Relative Constructions A Relative Clause is a subordinate clause with an anaphoric relationship to a matrix clause. The primary function of a Relative Clause – as we saw in Chapter 5 – is as a modifier of a nominal within an NP. This chapter first looks at Relative Clauses in this typical function and then extends the description to cover less prototypical relative constructions. 12.1 Relative Clauses as Modifiers in Nominals Examples of Relative Clauses functioning as modifier in the nominal part of an NP are given in [1], where the nominal is in brackets (recall that the nominal is basically the NP minus the determiner) and the Relative Clause within it is underlined: [1] i The secretary wrote to all the [members who were absent from the meeting]. ii The [video that I needed] is unobtainable. • In [i], the Relative Clause who were absent from the meeting is a modifier in the nominal headed by members, namely members who were absent from the meeting. • Similarly in [ii], the Relative Clause is a modifier in the nominal headed by video, and the head nominal is determined by the. Because Relative Clauses semantically provide extra descriptive content mainly applied to nouns, traditional grammar called them ‘adjective clauses’ – a very bad idea, because Relative Clauses have dramatically different properties from adjectives. Relative Clauses come AFTER the noun rather than before it like adjectives; compare the candidate who was successful with the successful candidate. (It isn’t even true that what’s modified by a Relative Clause is always a noun or nominal, by the way: it’s true in the examples we’re dealing with in this section, but we’ll consider other cases in §12.2.3.) The Relative Clause in [1i] is introduced by the relative pronoun who, which is one of a small set of words called relative words. The interpretation of who is provided by its antecedent, the noun members. A pronoun and its antecedent are related by
- Anand Syea(Author)
- 2023(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
11 Relative ClausesDOI: 10.4324/9781003458289-1111.1 Introduction
This chapter looks at Relative Clauses in English creoles. Section 11.2 presents a brief overview of the main types of Relative Clauses in English, with information on restrictive relatives in Section 11.2.1 , non-restrictive relatives in Section 11.2.2 , and headless (free) relatives in Section 11.2.3 . Section 11.3 looks at Relative Clauses in English creoles. Section 11.3.1 looks at restrictive Relative Clauses, Section 11.3.2 at non-restrictive Relative Clauses, and Section 11.3.3 at free (headless) Relative Clauses. Section 3.4 ends the chapter with a few concluding remarks.11.2 Relative Clauses in English
There are different types of Relative Clauses in English. These include restrictive Relative Clauses, non-restrictive (appositive) Relative Clauses, and free (headless) Relative Clauses.11.2.1 Restrictive Relative Clauses
Restrictive Relative Clauses have the same function as adjectival modifiers. They modify the noun or noun phrase that they immediately follow. Thus, in an example like the student who the police arrested was from that university, the underlined string who the police arrested is a Relative Clause and it modifies the noun phrase the student. It is an integral part of the subject noun phrase as is clear from the fact that the pronoun s/he in the student who the police arrested was from that university and s/he was released this morning refers back to the whole string the student who the police arrested and not just the student. Semantically, the Relative Clause who the police arrested is said to be restrictive in the sense that it restricts the set of students to the student who the police arrested, and it is relative in the sense that the object of its verb ‘relates’ anaphorically to the head of the relative construction, namely the student. More generally, the modifying Relative Clause is said to ‘relate’ to the NP that contains it (Huddleston 1984
eBook - PDFA Critical Account of English Syntax
Grammar, Meaning, Text
- Keith Brown, Jim Miller(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Edinburgh University Press(Publisher)
British writers use both that and wh words in restrictive rela-tive clauses and even American writers follow the same practice. Relative ClauseS 189 In writing, a non-restrictive Relative Clause is usually separated from the preceding clause by some punctuation symbol, often a comma, as in (3). 3 We spent a week in Istanbul, which is an enthralling city. The comma may give the impression that the non-restrictive Relative Clause is an integral part of the structure of the sentence, but other common formatting practices highlight the independence of such clauses. They may be separated from the preceding clause by an em- dash, as in (4), or enclosed in parentheses, as in (5) and (6). 4 Those with advanced degrees are especially likely to leave. . .This is regrettable. . .But it is also an opportunity – which the country is squandering. The Economist , 9–15 August 2014, ‘The British diaspora’, p. 26. 5 While the 63-year-old legend of telly cookery is having a stiffener in the pub next door, 100 of his faithful are milling about in the foyer of the Pocklington Arts Centre in North Yorkshire, flicking through a free booklet of his favourite recipes (some of which are printed on these pages). The Independent , 11 October 2007, Extra , pp. 2–3 6 In her 3 rd year she did an ERASMUS placement in Barcelona (which was amazing) and is bilingually fluent in English/French and can also speak Spanish. http://langsoc.eusa.ed.ac.uk/blog/?page_id=277 (accessed on 1 September 2011) We pass over theories about the constituent structure of (3)–(6), merely pointing out that this question received no satisfactory answer in the heyday of transformational grammar and constituent structure and is not much discussed nowadays. We finish this section with two examples from a recent detective novel in which a noun is modified by two rela-tive clauses, the second following directly the first.
eBook - PDFWho Climbs the Grammar-Tree
[leaves for David Reibel]
- Rosemarie Tracy(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
257 Elsa Lattey and Juliane Moeck Linguistic and Stylistic Considerations Affecting Restrictive Relative Clauses in Spoken and Written English 1 1, Introduction The differences between spoken and written discourse are often discussed in terms of factors such as permanence, speed of production, reviewability, or intonation. Less frequently, investigators have considered the role of specific grammatical structures in the one or the other type of discourse. The present study takes a look at specification of an entity mentioned in the discourse (an NP) by means of postmodification. One of the principal clausal structures used by speakers/writers in such postmodifications is the Relative Clause. In this construction, there are several available options: use of the relative pronoun that or of wA-relatives such as who, which, whose, etc., absence of a relative pronoun, and absence of both a relative pronoun + the auxiliary be (cf. (l)-(7)). T 2 (1) He's using the power that California gains from being [a] textbook adoption state. (radio panel = B^) W (2) She soon put the city slickers who dismissed her in their place [...] (non-fiction = L) W (3) And he would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sate [sic] beside him.
eBook - PDFContextualized French Grammar
A Handbook
- Stacey Bourns(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
156 CHAPTER 9 Relative Clauses Rappel Independent clauses can exist alone as sentences or be linked using conjunctions, as in the following examples. Mary skied, while a duck ate the pizza. A duck ate the pizza, and the man who refused to wear long pants even in the snow made a mess in the dog house. Dependent clauses: that Mary liked which was really funny if you loved me who was the silliest which is interesting dog I’d ever met Rappel Dependent clauses cannot stand alone; they must be connected to other phrases and clauses. Relative ClauseS 9.2 What are Relative Clauses? Relative Clauses are dependent clauses and cannot exist on their own. There are two major types: restrictive and headless. You will also find one other kind, called non-restrictive, later in this chapter. RESTRICTIVE Relative ClauseS 9.3 What are restrictive Relative Clauses? Restrictive Relative Clauses are used to give more information about a noun. They are called restrictive because the information that they provide restricts membership in a particular group, in the same way that adjectives do. Just as les filles américaines ( the American girls ), which consists of a deter-miner, a noun, and an adjective, is a smaller and more restricted group than les filles ( the girls ) alone (in the first phrase, only American girls are allowed, not girls from other places), restrictive Relative Clauses do the same thing. Here is an example. L’homme qui parle français The man who is speaking French mange un croissant. is eating a croissant. Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
eBook - ePubLinguistic Typology
Morphology and Syntax
- Jae Jung Song(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
4Relative Clauses
4.1
IntroductionThe Relative Clause (or RC hereafter) – along with basic word order and case marking – occupies a very prominent place in linguistic typology. Keenan and Comrie’s (1977) cross-linguistic study, which deals with none other than grammatical constraints on relativization or Relative Clause formation, is regarded as ‘one of the most influential works in the language universals literature’ (Fox 1987: 856). The RC construction, as is generally understood, consists of two components: the head noun and the restricting clause. The semantic function of the head noun is to establish a set of entities, which may be called the domain of relativization, following Keenan and Comrie (1977: 63), whereas that of the restricting clause is to identify a subset of the domain – a one-member subset in the case of (1 ) below – by imposing a semantic condition on the domain of relativization referred to by the head noun. In the following example the head noun is the girl and the restricting clause whom Miss Edge coached .(1) The girl whom Miss Edge coached won the game.In (1 ), thus, the domain of relativization is denoted by the head noun the girl . This domain of relativization is then ‘narrowed down’, as it were, to the only entity that can satisfy the condition expressed by the restricting clause whom Miss Edge coached . It is in this sense that the restricting clause has traditionally been understood to modify the head noun, hence the alternative label of the attributive clause.In the present chapter a survey of the types of RC found in the languages of the world will first be presented, focusing on the position of the head noun relative to the restricting clause and also on the various ways – referred to as relativization strategies in the literature – in which the role of the head noun is expressed in the restricting clause. Keenan and Comrie’s (1977) hierarchy of grammatical relations, i.e. the Accessibility Hierarchy , will then be discussed with a view to identifying constraints that operate cross-linguistically on relativization. Some of the predictions made by the Accessibility Hierarchy will also be shown to be better understood in the light of C. Lehmann’s (1986) investigation of correlations between diverse RC-related properties. Moreover, the top end of the Accessibility Hierarchy – subject and direct object – will be re-evaluated in view of Fox’s (1987) Absolutive Hypothesis , which shares the same conceptual basis with Du Bois’s (1987) discourse analysis of ergativity, discussed in 3.10 . In the last part of the chapter discussion of the relationship between RC type and word order type will be developed as a prelude to critical examination of processing-based accounts of the distribution of the ‘major’ RC types. In particular Hawkins’s (1994) Early Immediate Constituents (EIC) Theory, which was discussed in great detail with respect to basic word order in Chapter 2
eBook - PDF- Ann Raimes, Susan Miller-Cochran(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
● The deal what the CEO was trying to make turned out to be crooked. 44b Restrictive and nonrestrictive Relative Clauses The two types of Relative Clauses, restrictive and nonrestrictive, fulfill different functions and need different punctuation (45d). Restrictive The people who live in the apartment above mine make a lot of noise at night. Nonrestrictive The Sullivans, who live in the apartment above mine , make a lot of noise at night. Restrictive Relative Clause A restrictive Relative Clause provides information that is essential for identifying the antecedent and restrict-ing its scope. Features The clause is not set off with commas. It is needed to understand what the subject is. An object relative pronoun can be omitted. That (rather than which ) is used for reference to nonhuman ante-cedents. ● The teachers who challenge us are the ones we remember. [The independent clause—“The teachers are the ones we remember”—leads us to ask, “Which teachers?” The Relative Clause provides information that is essential to completing the meaning of the subject; it restricts the meaning from “all teachers” to “the teachers who challenge us.”] ● The book [ that ] you gave me was fascinating. [The relative pronoun that is the direct object in its clause (“You gave me the book”) and can be omitted.] Nonrestrictive Relative Clause A nonrestrictive Relative Clause provides information that merely adds descriptive information. Features The antecedent is a unique, designated person or thing. ^ that 549 44c Agreement of Verb with Relative Pronoun The clause is set off by commas; it provides additional nonessential information, a kind of aside. It could be omitted, and the sentence would make sense without it. Which (not that ) is used to refer to a nonhuman antecedent. An object relative pronoun cannot be omitted. ● The book War and Peace , which you gave me, was fascinating.
eBook - ePub- Otto Jespersen(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Chapter III Relative Clauses as PrimariesFirst, as the subject of a sentence, for instance:3.11 .A Relative Clause can be employed as a primary in the following three positions.Who steales my purse, steales trash (Sh Oth III 3.157).Whoever says so is a liar.What you say is quite true.What money I have is at your disposal (A).Whatever I get is at your disposal.Second, as the object of a verb:You may marry whom you choose. You may take which of the apples you like. He wants to shoot whoever comes near him. He will take what you offer him. She will give you what money she has (A).He will take whatever comes his way. She will eat whatever sweets you give her (A).Third, as the object of a preposition:You may dance with whom you like .He will shoot at whoever comes near him. He only laughed at what we said. He will be thankful for what help you can offer him (A).He will pay attention to whatever you may say.She went through whatever paces her owner demanded of her (Thack N 396) (A).On the development of Relative Clauses see Holger Johansen, Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der altgerm. Relativsatzkon-struktionen. Copenhagen 1935.3.12 .The analysis here offered as the only natural one is that it is the clause itself in its entirety that is the subject or object1 . This is opposed to the way in which such clauses are regarded in other grammars. In these we find, as a matter of fact, two different views, both of which lead into unsurmountable difficulties when thought out in all their consequences (cf my criticism in PG 103 f.). The deepest-lying reason, perhaps, why the nature of these constructions has not been understood, is that the compound pronouns whoever
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