appositive relative clauses

[Paul Hopper]

Martin makes an apt point in mentioning the affinity of nonrestrictives with written language. Some English-language publishing houses require ALL restrictives to have "that" and ALL nonrestrictives to have "who/which" (and to be enclosed by commas). So there is a language (Publisherese?) in which indeed the two types are distinguished in their coding.

Paul



> 
> P.S. Lutz's original query was about nonrestrictive relative clauses 
> without a relative pronoun or particle, but apparently he is primarily 
> interested in nonrestrictive relative clauses that are not marked for 
> subordination at all. I can very well imagine that there is indeed a 
> tendency for zero-coded relative clause constructions to be avoided in 
> nonrestrictive use, though I think there are few reports of nonrestrictive
> relative clauses differing in their coding from restrictive relative
> clauses. Maybe this is because nonrestrictive relative clauses occur
> mostly in written language, and most languages are not used in writing.
> 
> -- Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) Max-Planck-Institut fuer
> evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz 6 D-04103 Leipzig Tel. (MPI)
> +49-341-3550 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616
> 
> Glottopedia - the free encyclopedia of linguistics 
> (http://www.glottopedia.org)
> 
> 


-- 
Paul J. Hopper
Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of the Humanities
Department of English
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15232, USA
Tel. 412-683-1109
Fax 412-268-7989