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Infinitival relative clauses in spoken discourse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Christer Geisler
Christer Geisler
Affiliation:
University of Uppsala
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Abstract

This article concerns infinitival relative clauses, such as Mary is the person to ask, and their distribution in spoken English. It analyzes the correlation between the function of the antecedent in the relative clause and the function of the whole postmodified NP (the relative complex) in the matrix clause. On the basis of a quantitative analysis of a corpus of spoken British English, I show that the grammatical function of the antecedent in the infinitival relative clause depends on the function of the antecedent in the matrix clause. I argue that the distribution of antecedent functions in the matrix clause can be explained in terms of thematic properties and information structure of the clauses in which the infinitival relatives occur. A key notion is that speakers center their discourse around information that they assume to be important for the communicative event.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , March 1998 , pp. 23 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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