Appositive Relative Clauses in English
Discourse functions and competing structures
1st Edition
Published on 24. March 2010
XIII, 232 pages
978-90-272-8845-5 (ISBN)
Description
This book sheds new light on Appositive Relative Clauses (ARCs), a structure that is generally studied from a merely syntactic point of view, in opposition to Determinative (or Restrictive) Relative Clauses (DRCs). In this volume, ARCs are examined from a discourse/pragmatic point of view, independently of DRCs, in order to provide a positive definition of the structure. After a presentation of the morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic characteristics of ARCs, a taxonomy of their functions in discourse is established for both written and spoken English based on the results of a corpus-based investigation. Constraints are then defined within an information-packaging approach to syntactic structures to show why speakers choose ARCs over other competing allostructures, i.e. syntactic structures that fulfil similar discourse functions (e.g. nominal appositives, independent clauses, adverbials, noun premodifiers, topicalization). The end result is a deeper understanding of the richness of ARCs in their natural contexts of use.
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Content
- Appositive Relative Clauses in English
- Editorial page
- Title page
- LCC data
- Table of contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I. Appositive relative clauses (ARCs)
- 1. Definitions and previous studies
- 1. The traditional appositive/determinative dichotomy
- 2. Distinctive criteria
- 2.1 A semantic/referential distinction
- 2.2 The punctuation criterion
- 2.3 The morphosyntactic criteria
- 2.4 Other criteria
- 2.5 The syntactic representation(s) of ARCs
- 2.6 Conclusion on the DRC-ARC distinction
- 3. Problems
- 3.1 The limits of the distinction
- 3.2 The specific problem of DRCs with indefinite antecedents
- 3.3 An operational dichotomy?
- 3.4 Conclusion
- 4. Previous studies on the role of ARC s
- 4.1 ARCs as background information
- 4.2 Previous attempts at defining taxonomies
- 5. Conclusion
- 2. Atypical appositive relative clauses
- 1. Starting point: "Are you a good which or a bad which?"
- 2. Definitions
- 2.1 Typical vs. atypical ARCs
- 2.2 Corpus
- 2.3 Description of the data
- 2.4 Dysfluencies vs. syntactic variation
- 2.5 Analysis
- 3. Conclusion
- Part II. The discourse functions of ARCs
- 3. The corpus
- 1. The written corpus
- 1.1 Four sub-corpora
- 1.2 Morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic characteristics of written ARCs
- 2. The spoken corpus
- 2.1 Definitions
- 2.2 The corpus
- 2.3 Morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic characteristics of spoken ARCs
- 2.4 Conclusion on the written/spoken distinction
- 3. Conclusion
- 4. The discourse functions of ARCs
- 1. Introductory presentation
- 2. Continuative ARCs
- 2.1 Definition
- 2.2 Characteristics
- 3. Relevance ARCs
- 3.1 Relevance: A definition
- 3.2 Definition of relevance ARCs
- 3.3 The different discourse strategies
- 3.4 From relevance to politeness
- 3.5 Relevance vs. relevance
- 3.6 Characteristics
- 4. Subjectivity ARC s
- 4.1 Definitions
- 4.2 The different discourse strategies
- 4.3 Characteristics
- 5. Register variation: Spoken vs. written ARCs
- 5.1 Frequency
- 5.2 Discourse distribution
- 5.3 Specific (conversational) functions
- 6. The correlation between the discourse functions of ARCs and their prosodic realizations
- 6.1 Introduction
- 6.2 The prosody of ARCs vs. the prosody of parentheticals in general
- 6.3 The prosody of ARCs in relation to their functions in discourse
- 7. Conclusion
- Part III. ARCs and their competing "allostructures"
- 5. The information-packaging function of syntactic structures and the definition of allostructures
- 1. Definitions
- 1.1 Information packaging
- 1.2 Allostructures: Definitions and methodology
- 1.3 Defining the allostructures of ARCs
- 2. Apposition: The natural allostructure of ARC s?
- 2.1 Apposition: An attempt at definition
- 2.2 Definitions
- 2.3 Apposition and ARCs: Many similarities
- 2.4 A failed rendez-vous?
- 3. Apposition and ARC s as allostructures
- 3.1 ARCs vs. 'simple' nominal apposition
- 3.2 ARCs vs. 'complex' nominal apposition
- 4. Conclusion
- 6. Appositive relative clauses
- 1. What (other) allostructures for ARC s (alloARC s)?
- 2. Syntactic phenomena
- 3. Semantic and pragmatic phenomena
- 3.1 The hierarchization of information
- 3.2 Thematic progression: ARCs vs. preposing
- 3.3 The explicitness/implicitness of the link between the information contents
- 4. Other influencing parameters
- 4.1 Register variation
- 4.2 Stylistic variation
- 5. Conclusion
- Conclusion
- References
- Appendix
- Index
- The series Studies in Discourse and Grammar
