Rudy Loock

Appositive relative clauses in English : discourse functions and competing structures

This book sheds new light on Appositive Relative Clauses (ARCs), a structure that is generally studied from a merely syntactic point of view, in opposition to Determinative (or Restrictive) Relative Clauses (DRCs). In this volume, ARCs are examined from a discourse/pragmatic point of view, independently of DRCs, in order to provide a positive definition of the structure. After a presentation of the morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic characteristics of ARCs, a taxonomy of their functions in discourse is established for both written and spoken English based on the results of a corpus-based investigation. Constraints are then defined within an information-packaging approach to syntactic structures to show why speakers choose ARCs over other competing allostructures, i.e. syntactic structures that fulfil similar discourse functions (e.g. nominal appositives, independent clauses, adverbials, noun premodifiers, topicalization). The end result is a deeper understanding of the richness of ARCs in their natural contexts of use.

The Discourse Functions of Nonverbal Appositives

This article investigates the discourse functions of nonverbal appositives: noun phrases, prepositional phrases, and adjective phrases in apposition to a preceding nominal unit. Given the many similarities between nonverbal appositives and appositive relative clauses, the discourse functions of the latter serve as a starting point for an evaluation of the discourse functions of the former. More precisely, we compare our 600-token corpus of nonverbal appositives with Loock’s taxonomy of discourse functions for appositive relative clauses. The taxonomy is then modified to accommodate the nonverbal appositives that do not fit the taxonomy. Correlations with a series of linguistic parameters are established.