"Relative clauses" with no relativized element

[Ron Kuzar]

A thorough discussion of the head nouns and their relation with their
complement clauses may be found in Hans-Joerg Schmid's book on Shell
Nouns (this is his term for the head nouns).
Ron Kuzar
---------
On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 8:16 PM, Suzanne Kemmer <kemmer at rice.edu> wrote:

> In Generative Syntax these clauses were viewed as complement clauses with
> an NP head, distinct
> from relative clauses but having some parallels with them.  I think it was
> Joan Bresnan that
> brought out the parallels and distinctions, maybe in her doctoral
> dissertation . As I recall (but
> my remembrance may be faulty), Bresnan named the
> THAT element a COMP for complementizer.
>
> The term 'appositive' isn't very good because in traditional grammar
> that is reserved for an  'UNrestrictive' relation of a noun and its
> complement--an incidental description of
> a head N's referent rather than a specification of which referent ("the
> tree, a live oak, survived another 100 years or so").
>
> In Cognitive Grammar  nouns like claim, statement, idea, realization,
> belief etc. are in almost all cases nominalizations of 'viewing predicates'
> (verbs like claim, believe,  etc.) that introduce on-stage predications
> 'viewed' by a conceptualizer (the person doing the claiming, etc.). (the
> viewing
> predicates are space builders in Fauconnier's mental spaces terminology)
>
> For the nominalizations of these predicates, the semantics of the nouns
> intrinsically has an "e-site" or elaboration site
> that allows for spelling out the content of the viewed predicate in the
> form of a complement clause.  The e-site
> inherent to the semantics of the nouns is parallel to the e-site inherent
> to the semantics of the corresponding verbs.
>
> There are a few cases I can think of  of nouns that have  'viewing
> predicate' e-sites but don't have  corresponding verbs .
> For example
> the noun _view_   "The view that global climate change is anthropogenic is
> widely held by scientists"
> ( ' X views that (proposition)' is not possible, only 'X views Y as ...' ,
> with a restriction to equative or descriptive propositions).
> Also _idea_----the verb has to be changed to something like 'believe'  to
> make a corresponding full predicate.
>
> I view (!) these nouns as semantically parallel in interesting ways to
> picture nouns.  The conceptualizer (viewer) in
> both cases can designate the noun in a possessive phrase, but after that
> the syntax diverges.
>
> --Suzanne
>
> On Sep 10, 2010, at 11:21 AM, Arie Verhagen wrote:
>
> And as another addition: the clauses that can only be introduced by *that*
>> (with no role to
>> play in the subordinate clause) may be seen as (subtypes of) complement
>> clauses,
>> expressing a proposition with the noun functioning as Complement Taking
>> Predicate (CTP),
>> expressing a propostional attitude, epistemic/evaluative stance, etc.
>> (following analyses by
>> Thompson, Diessel, Langacker, myself, and others), i.e. not relatives. Cf.
>> constructions like
>> "The claim is that X" (traditionally analysed as subject clauses), "I
>> claim that X", "I put forward
>> the claim that X", in which the relationship between the verb or noun and
>> the that-clause is
>> comparable to the one in "The claim that X".
>>
>> --Arie Verhagen
>>
>> ----------------
>> Message from Rong Chen <rchen at csusb.edu>
>> 10 Sep 2010, 23:42
>>
>> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] "Relative clauses" with no relativi
>>
>>  To add to Joanne's comments:
>>>
>>> There are basically three ways to distinguish an appositive clause
>>> (AC) from a relative clause (RC).
>>>
>>> 1) An AC can only be led by *that* while an RC can be led by other
>>> pronouns.
>>>
>>> 2) The AC and the noun it modifies display an equative relationship--one
>>> can say X
>>> (denoted by the noun) is Y (presented by the appositive)--while an RC
>>> often doesn't
>>> (except, perhaps, when the relative clause is sentential).
>>>
>>
>> 3)--which Tom noted--*that* is not part of the clause in an AC; but a
>>> relative pronoun
>>> is always part of the clause in an RC.
>>>
>>> Rong Chen
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>


-- 
===============================================
                    Dr. Ron Kuzar
Address:       Department of English Language and Literature
                    University of Haifa
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