Appositive Relative Clauses and their Functions in Discourse.

Rudy Loock (1)

1 STL - Savoirs, Textes, Langage (STL) - UMR 8163

Previous studies on relative clauses have mostly dealt with the restrictive/non-restrictive dichotomy, focusing on the differences from a syntactic point of view. In particular, non-restrictive relative clauses have traditionally been defined negatively i.e. with reference only to functions they do not have. In this article, evidence is provided for a postitive definition of this type of relative clause, which will be labelled here 'appositive relative clause' (ARC). A taxonomy is suggested, obtained through the study of a 450-utterance, contextualised corpus. The taxonomy is based on syntactic, semantic, and above all, pragmatic criteria, followig Prince's (1981, 1992) definitions of given/new information and Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory (1986). Findings of a survey also show that ARCs are not systematically suppressible and that the differences in suppressibility can be accounted for by the different functions fulfilled by the ARC in discourse.

Mots clés: Appositive Relative Clauses; Discourse functions; Informational status; Relevance; Subjectivity; Suppressibility

Domaines: Linguistique

Rudy Loock. Appositive Relative Clauses and their Functions in Discourse.. Journal of Pragmatics, 2007, 39, p. 336-362. ⟨10.1016/j.pragma.2006.02.007⟩. ⟨halshs-00133611⟩