The syntax of relative and appositive clauses

Abstract

The surface syntactic similarities between sentences containing defining relative clauses and appositive clauses make them candidates for confusion by Arab students of English. This paper’s main claim is that, in spite of the seemingly surface similarities between these clauses, both structures can be shown to belong in completely different areas of nominalization. Some of these differences will be accounted for via syntactic argumentation at three levels of analysis: the head noun, the complementizer, and the clause. To do so, the paper will focus and make use of well-known syntactic argumentation, which consists in deleting, moving, and shifting round the various parts of the sentences object of this study. The objective of such syntactic testing is to assist Arab students of English in indulging into syntactic argumentation to discriminate between these types of sentences in their linguistics-related courses especially syntax courses.