Relative clauses and commas (was: Re: "certain" inThe First Noel)

[Scot LaFaive]

I always assumed it came from the prosody of when speakers say some relative
clauses (the non-restrictive ones at least), with a pause (eg. George Bush,
who used to be a governor, ...)

Scot


>From: David Borowitz <borowitz at STANFORD.EDU>
>Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Relative clauses and commas (was: Re: "certain" inThe First Noel)
>Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2007 13:41:48 -0400
>
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       David Borowitz <borowitz at STANFORD.EDU>
>Subject:      Relative clauses and commas (was: Re: "certain" inThe First
>Noel)
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Does anyone know the history of the use of commas to set off relative
>clauses in English? My hunch is it has a storied history (maybe back to
>Latin or Greek?), as some languages (e.g. Spanish) seem to have rules
>similar to English, whereas others (e.g. Russian) have far more obligatory
>commas.
>
>
>On 8/2/07, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
> >
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: "certain" inThe First Noel
> >
> >
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------=
>------
> >
> > On Aug 2, 2007, at 9:59 AM, Larry Horn wrote:
> >
> > > At 12:43 PM -0400 8/2/07, Mark Mandel wrote:
> > >> Yup. It's a garden path sentence. The catch is that the obvious
> > >> interpretation of "The first Noel", as referring to the first
> > >> Christmas,
> > >> doesn't work. Instead, I take it as referring to the greeting: The
> > >> angels'
> > >> first Christmas greeting was uttered to certain poor shepherds.
> > >
> > > Ah, so you and dInIs are taking it as "The first
> > > No=EBl that the angels did say..."!  I always
> > > assumed the parenthetical reading as you describe
> > > it below, although as you convincingly argue this
> > > is indeed hard to sustain semantically.
> >
> > well, the punctuation indicates a parenthetical.  unfortunately, the
> > carol is old enough to have a restrictive relative ("(that) the
> > angels did say") set off by commas, something we (mostly) don't do
> > any more.
> >
> > arnold
> >
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> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
>--=20
>It is better to be quotable than to be honest.
>     -Tom Stoppard
>
>Borowitz
>
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>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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