CHAPTER 3: RELATIVE CLAUSE CONSTRUCTIONS:
3.1. Typology of RCs
3.1.2. Semantic Typology of RCs
3.1.2.1. Appositive RCs and Restrictive RCs
Appositive RCs, unlike restrictive RCs, provide additional information about the head noun. Specifically, Bhatt (2005a) points out the distinction between them as follows: As the appositive vs. restrictive opposition suggests, there is a difference in the way an appositive relative clause combines with the head and the way a restrictive relative clause does (p.1). Yet, this ‘truth conditional distinction’
does not always work (Potts 2005).
(21) a. restrictive relative clause:
The students who are from Sydney like Kylie.
All the students don’t need to be from Sydney.
b. appositive relative clause:
The students, who are from Sydney, like Kylie.
All the students are from Sydney.
Appositive RCs have a relative pronoun with wh- material in English (as in 22b), and they cannot take a relative complementizer like that (22a) (Kayne 1994, Bianchi 1999, p. 201, Bhatt 2005a, p. 2):
(22) a. *This book, that I read thoroughly, is delightful.
b. This book, which I read thoroughly, is delightful.
c. *This book, - I read thoroughly, is delightful.
However, this situation is not universal. It does not hold for Italian relative clauses, where ‘that’- clauses are acceptable in appositives. Another underlying distinction between appositive RCs and restrictive RCs is that restrictive RCs do not always involve a true ‘restriction’ (p. 2):
(23) a. the positive numbers that aren’t negative.
b. the bachelors who are unmarried.
(Potts 2005, pp. 94-95)
Despite their property of providing additional information, appositive RCs still need to refer to head nouns as compared to other reference devices. For example, appositive RCs differ from other subordinate clauses using relative pronouns as shown in (24) (Grosu 2002, see also Branchini 2006). The personal pronoun ‘she’ in (24a) cannot be replaced with interrogative pronoun as a relative marker ‘who’ in (24b), because there is a need for an anaphora between head noun and relative pronoun in appositive relative clauses:
(24) a. The house collapsed; she ran away terrified.
b. *The house collapsed, who ran away terrified.
(Grosu 2002, p. 146)
Branchini (2006, pp. 89-90), after de Vries (2002, pp. 181-233) as well as Bhatt (2005a, pp. 1-7), provides additional properties of appositive RCs (see 25). I will provide contrasting examples for each property. As for a detailed discussion, the reader is referred to de Vries (2002).
(25) a. Appositive RCs require a specific antecedent (e.g., quantified expressions cannot be the head noun for appositive relative clauses)
b. Appositive RCs are not transparent for binding.
c. Prosodic cues in appositives may differ from the ones in restrictives.
d. Appositives have some special semantic properties: noncancellability, anti-backgrounding and scopelessness.
If the matrix clause has an indefinite head noun it must also be specific (also presupposed) (de Vries 2002, p. 182). For instance, (26a) has an indefinite but non-specific head noun and therefore an appositive reading (as indicated by the comma) is not possible, whereas it allows a restrictive reading as in (26b). In the case of (26c), the indefinite antecedent has a specific reading and therefore it can be regarded as appositive.
(26) a. * Ik zag een man, die een rode hoed droeg.
I saw a man, who a red hat wore.
b. Ik zag een man die een rode hoed droeg.
c. Ik heb een nieuwe trui gekregen, die m’n oma heeft gebreid.
I have a new sweater received, which my granny has knitted.
(de Vries 2002, p. 183)
Similarly, Bhatt (2005a) provides examples (27) showing that quantified expressions cannot have appositive readings:
(27) a. *Susan interviewed every senator, who is crooked.
b. *No person, who knows everything, is perfect.
(Bhatt 2005a, p. 4)
This example can be related to de Vries’ (2002, p. 188) statement that an appositive is opaque for quantifiers and negation, contrary to restrictives. De Vries provides two examples from Dutch, one of which is restrictive (28a) and the other of which is appositive (28b). While sentence (28a) is possible, ‘hij’
cannot be used for appositives:
(28) a. Bijna niemand vertelde over de toren die hij beklommen had almost nobody told about the tower which he climbed had.
b. * Bijna niemand vertelde over de Martinitoren, die hij beklommen had.
almost nobody told about the Martini tower, which he climbed had.
(de Vries 2002, p. 188)
Jackendoff (1977, p. 176) points out, the negative polarity item ‘any’
cannot be licenced by a negative element in an appositive in the way that it does in a restrictive (in de Vries 2002 and Branchini 2006, p. 94), as shown in the contrast between (29a-b):
(29) a. I didn’t see a man who had had any drinks.
b. I didn’t see Bill, who had had some/*any drinks.
In addition to the properties provided above, the distinction between appositives and restrictives can be marked by prosody. For instance, in English, appositives have comma intonation (Emonds 1979, in de Vries 2002, p. 195).
Another example is from Jackendoff (1977, p. 173): while the NP in restrictive
RCs can have focus and negation properties (30a), this is not possible in appositive RCs (30b):
(30) a. We didn’t talk to the man who married SUSAN.
(We talked to the man who married JANE.)
b. *We didn’t talk to the man, who married SUSAN.
The prosodic properties that are shown above are observed in English. As Branchini (2006) states, the intonation variation regarding restrictiveness may be language-specific.
Bhatt (2005b) lists some additional properties such as non-cancellability, anti-backgrounding and non-restrictiveness. The property of non-restrictiveness of appositives has been shown already in (25). The first two properties are exemplified in (31) and (32), as provided in Bhatt (2005b, pp. 6-7; derived from Potts 2003, pp. 147-148):
(31) Non-cancellability:
a. Edna, who is a fearless leader, started the descent. #Edna is not a fearless leader.
b. #19 If Armstrong did win the 2003 Tour de France, then Lance Armstrong, who is the 2003 Tour de France winner, is training.
(32) Anti-backgrounding: Lance Armstrong survived cancer.
a. # When reporters interview Lance, who is a cancer survivor, he often talks about the disease.
b. And most riders know that Lance is a cancer survivor.
Potts (2003) indicates that the statement in (31a) which has appositive reading, provides the fact that ‘Edna is a fearless leader’ and therefore it is not
19 Symbol dash ‘#’ represents sentences that are semantically and/or pragmatically not acceptable
plausible to contradict this fact to say ‘Edna is not a fearless leader.’ From this statement, we can derive that appositive RCs provide an additional conventional implication. In addition, the presupposition in (31b) ‘If Armstrong did win the 2003 Tour de France’, given within this context, contradicts with the factual statement ‘who is the 2003 Tour de France winner.’ This explains itself as noncancellability (or, using Potts’ terms, nondeniable meanings.)
Potts (2003) calls statements which are not preferred to be backgrounded with the next utterance by the name antibackgrounding effect. As shown in (32a), repeating the appositive reading ‘who is a cancer survivor’ does not fit well with the first statement, which already provided the fact that ‘Lance Armstrong is a cancer survivor.’
Besides the examples distinguishing between restrictive and appositive provided above, more possible differences and false assumptions on appositives can be found in de Vries’ dissertation (2002).
Against the backdrop of the underlying properties of appositives, Branchini (2006) lists some main properties of restrictive RCs (33). Each property will be proved by several examples.
(33) a. RRCs require a non-specific antecedent.
b. RRCs form a constituent with their antecedent.
c. RRCs are transparent for binding.
(Branchini 2006, pp. 80-90)
We have shown that appositives can only take indefinite but specific antecedents. On the contrary, restrictive RCs cannot take specific antecedents. For instance, restrictives cannot modify proper names and pronouns, as shown in (34a) and (34b) (Branchini 2006, pp. 82-83). However, restrictive RCs can take quantified antecedents as in (35), which is not the case for appositive RCs, as shown in the examples in (27) (Ross 1967, in Branchini 2006).
(34) a. *Thomas that works very hard has been promoted.
b. *He that works very hard has been promoted.
c. The young man that works very hard has been promoted.
(35) Every student who attended my course will be rewarded.
Branchini (2006) shows that restrictive RCs can also contain VP ellipsis. In other words, if the head noun is an object of the verb in a restrictive, they together can form a constituent, as shown in (36):
(36) My mother ate the vegetables I cooked, my father didn’t (eat the vegetables I cook).
(Branchini 2006, p. 88)
Further, it has been noted that appositive RCs do not allow transparent bindings; however this is different in the case of restrictive RCs. Relevant examples can be found in (27) and (28).
So far the boundaries and restrictions of both appositive and restrictive RCs have been analyzed. There are two main similarities between them (de Vries 2002 and Branchini 2006):
(37) a. the syntactic role that the pivot constituents play in the relative clause.
b. both can only modify NPs.
(de Vries 2002, p. 182)