Stress Test for Relative Clauses

نویسنده

  • Arndt Riester
چکیده

A brief overview on the semantic differences between restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses is given. Subsequently differences with regard to information status and focus alternatives are presented. I investigate, in a systematic way, which focus (accent) patterns on relative-clause constructions are (im)possible in which contexts and why this is so. In order to account for the infelicity of certain restrictive relative clause constructions a new proposal is made how to derive the contrastive properties of complex definite descriptions (focus phrases) involving relative clauses. The account presented in this paper gives rise to predictions on intonational phonology and sentence processing. 1 On the semantics of relative clauses Relative clauses are traditionally grouped in two main classes: restrictive and nonrestrictive/appositive.1 There is broad consensus that the distinction between the two types can informally be described by saying that restrictive relative clauses form an integral part of the greater (in)definite description and are necessary to determine the referent of that description whereas appositive relative clauses provide extra information about their external head noun, whose referent is determined on independent grounds, compare examples (1a) and (1b). (1) a. The young man whom you briefly met at the theatre yesterday is my nephew. b. The moon, which makes a complete orbit around the earth every 27.3 days, has a diameter of 3,474 km. Despite this intuitive and clear-cut picture, a description in formal semantic terms has for a long time presented a challenge which has to do with the presentiment that an explanation must be given in terms of discourse interaction rather than in a purely static way. I will briefly go through a series of proposals that have been made in the literature and discuss why they fall short or are not entirely convincing. Later on, I will present a context-dependent analysis in terms of information status theory and Alternative Semantics. 1The two notions will be used interchangeably. Arndt Riester & Edgar Onea (eds.) Focus at the Syntax-Semantics Interface. Working Papers of the SFB 732, Vol. 3, University of Stuttgart, 2009

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تاریخ انتشار 2009