Non-restrictive Relative Clauses Research Articles

On the derivation of nonrestrictive relative clauses in English

(1979). On the derivation of nonrestrictive relative clauses in English. Studia Neophilologica: Vol. 51, No. 2, pp. 197-203.

Speech data base for testing components of speech understanding systems

A set of over 700 sentences was designed to test acoustic effects due to various minimal contrasts in linguistic structures. One subset of sentences includes a comprehensive variety of phonetic sequences, to allow efficiently testing phonetic effects on prosodies, accuracy of phone recognition algorithms, and reliability of parameterization procedures such as ferment tracking. Another subset of sentences tests how acoustic correlates of stress and syntactic boundary locations (as determined by valleys in fundamental frequency contours) are altered as the position of stress within a constituent is moved. To study intonation patterns in isolation from the local fundamental frequency variations that accompany obstruents, many sentences have only sonorant sounds in them. Other sentences include only vowels and unvoiced consonants, to provide easy syllabication with energy measures. Sentences vary in complexity from simple declarative structures to sentences which introduce auxiliary verbs, prenominal adjectives, quantifiers, possessives, adverbs in various positions, there insertion, passives, yes/no and WH-questions, commands, and embedded structures such as restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses, complement structures, and conjuncts. The sentences were recorded by five male and three female talkers, with three repetitions spaced at least one week apart.

A Grammar of Contemporary English

The publication of this important volume fills the need for an up-to-date survey of the entire scope of English syntax. Though it falls short of a perfectly balanced treatment of the whole system, it touches upon all the essential topics and treats in depth a number of crucial problems of current interest such as case, ellipsis, and information focus. Even the publishers’ claims are vindicated to a surprising degree. The statement that it “constitutes a standard reference grammar” is reasonably well justified. Recent investigations, including the authors’ own research, are integrated into the “accumulated grammatical tradition” quite effectively. But whether it is “the fullest and most comprehensive synchronic description of English grammar ever written” is arguable. No one acquainted with Poutsma’s work would agree with that. Very advanced foreign students o r native speakers of English who want to learn about basic grammar will find some of thel sections suitable for their needs, such as the lesson about restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses, though even here some of the explanations require very intensive study. Most of the chapters are rather like an advanced textbook for teachers or linguists. The organization and viewpoint give the impression of a carefully planned university lecture supplemented by diagrams, charts, and lists. A good example is the lesson on auxiliaries and verb phrases, which starts with a set of sample sentences demonstrating that “should see” and “happen to see” behave differently under various transformations and expansions. After the essential concepts are explained and exemplified-lexical verb, semi-auxiliary, operator, and the like-lists and paradigms are given as in the usual reference work. A particularly useful feature of this chapter is the outline of modal auxiliaries with examples of their divergent meanings.

Some Generative Rules for German Time Adverbials

The paper is concerned only with those time adverbials that are not part of the Verb Phrase (free time adverbials). Taking the rule Adv -- Prep NP as part of the base, it is shown how different types of adverbials can be distinguished either by the syntactic features of the lexical items dominated by Adv or by configuration. Each #S# of the deep structure is allowed at most one free adverbial. Surface sentences with more than one free adverbial are derived either by conjoining #S#'s or by unfolding non-restrictive relative clauses within an adverbial. The latter type of derivation applies only to surface strings of adverbials of the same type, the former only to strings of adverbials of different types or to strings of adverbials of the same type joined by und. The purpose of this paper is twofold:' first, we are interested in the rules for certain time adverbials in a generative grammar of German, using the model proposed by Chomsky 1965; second, we wish to investigate the consequences of using the rule