Syntax and Semantics of English Non-restrictive Relative Clause Constructions

Abstract

Previous studies do not agree with the exact nature of NRCs(non-restrictive relative clauses, e.g. The teacher has rich sons, who are doctors) on the syntactic and semantic perspectives. The foal of this thesis is to illustrate that an NRC is a modifier syntactically, and that at the same time, in terms of semantics, and NRC behaves differently fromm the other normal restrictive modifiers. NRCs are more like parentheticals in the semantic point of view. I will show how to merge these conflicting syntactic and semantic behaviors of NRCs into one and a single feature structure of the grammar in the framework of HPSG by revising the present system. Moreover, I capture the conjunctive behavior of NRCs and make it possible to apply the new system into other kinds of parentheticals such as comment clauses.