A Multilevel Functional Classification of Relative Clauses
Relative Clauses (RCs) have been described and classified according to many different criteria (Sect. 1). This article deals with the distinctions that can be observed within the variety of English RCs in terms of phonological shape, syntactic structure, semantic content, presuppositions
and thematic structure of the utterance. A classification of RCs is proposed, which is based upon criteria of all different levels (Sect. 2). The aim is to provide a way to characterize as precisely as possible the functional features of any RC in correlation with its formal features. The
classification is then applied to an analysis of the often stated equivalence between RCs and other kinds of linguistic constituents, leading to the recognition of the different types of RCs that are functionally equivalent to adjectives, participles, prepositional phrases and coordinated
sentences (Sect. 3). A further application proposed is the comparison between the functional and formal features of English and Italian RCs (Sect. 4).
Document Type: Research Article
Publication date: 01 January 1994
- Access Key
- Free content
- Partial Free content
- New content
- Open access content
- Partial Open access content
- Subscribed content
- Partial Subscribed content
- Free trial content