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Defining relatives

Denison, David; Hundt, Marianne (2013). Defining relatives. Journal of English Linguistics, 41(2):135-167.

Abstract

This article uses a case study of scientific English from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries to test the traditional demarcation between restrictive and nonrestrictive adnominal relatives and to reconsider appropriate methods for analyzing such historical data. After an initial classification of some 1,160 clauses from the ARCHER corpus using the traditional dichotomy, alternative proposals for analyzing relative clauses are reviewed in the light of problematic examples. The concept of “aspective” relatives is adopted: those having most of the formal and pragmatic hallmarks of restrictive relatives while not strictly restrictive in the settheoretic sense. We identify these with the clauses in present-day English that are not restrictive but that Huddleston, Pullum, and Peterson include under the heading “integrated.” We add a fourth, minor type, “continuative.” Nevertheless our data present problems even for a four-way classification. We demonstrate how some analytic difficulties are the result of changes in text-type-specific style and conventions over time, plus general diachronic change, but also that some examples genuinely resist hard-and-fast classification. We therefore treat our classes as overlapping bands on a one-dimensional gradient, testing the revised classification in detail on our seventeenth-century data. The overlaps are less numerous than any of the three main types (restrictive, aspective, and nonrestrictive), but they help to reduce the number of unclear cases from over a quarter of the total in our initial classification to a mere 1 percent. We distinguish carefully between vagueness (underspecified examples where the interpretation is in no doubt) and ambiguity (involving a choice between interpretations that depends on missing information). We suggest that our classification might be more widely applicable to the study of relative clauses. By and large, modern Sprachgefühl can be used cautiously alongside other, more objective tests to classify relatives in historical scientific texts—a point of more general theoretical relevance.

Additional indexing

Item Type:Journal Article, refereed, original work
Communities & Collections:06 Faculty of Arts > English Department
Dewey Decimal Classification:820 English & Old English literatures
Scopus Subject Areas:Social Sciences & Humanities > Language and Linguistics
Social Sciences & Humanities > Linguistics and Language
Language:English
Date:June 2013
Deposited On:05 Jun 2013 12:44
Last Modified:09 Nov 2024 02:38
Publisher:SAGE Publications
ISSN:0075-4242
OA Status:Green
Publisher DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424213483572
Official URL:http://eng.sagepub.com/content/41/2/135

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