Project Details
Projekt
Semantische, pragmatische und prosodische Aspekte nicht-restriktiver Relativsätze
Subject Area
General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
Term
from 2011 to 2022
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 202630811
The objective of the NRR project is a functional and prosodic analysis of non-restrictive relative clauses (nrrcs) in German, French, and English. It is usually assumed that unlike their restrictive counterparts and despite their embedded position, nrrcs are neither semantically nor prosodically integrated in their matrix clause, ad that they do not even affect its (pragmatic) discourse function.Experiments carried out in the first project phase, however, revealed that factors like the position of nrrcs, prosody, as well as information and discourse structure may heavily bear upon their acceptability and interpretation. These findings militate against a full semantic, pragmatic, and prosodic autonomy of nrrcs as it has frequently been assumed in the literature.Consequently, the emphasis in the second phase will be put on an experimental approach to the question of whether nrrcs can be semantically and prosodically integrated into their matrix clause and if so, which factors determine their embedding behaviour. In particular, we will investigate whether (non-) embeddability depends on the position in the matrix clause; on particular anaphoric and nrrc-internal discourse elements; on prosodic factors; information structure; or the discourse connection between nrrc and matrix clause.
DFG Programme
Research Units
Subproject of
FOR 1783:
Relative Clauses
