Information AboutRestrictive Clause |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT RESTRICTIVENESS | |
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In Semantics , a Modifier is said to be restrictive if it restricts the reference of its Head . For example, in "the red car is fancier than the blue one," ''red'' and ''blue'' are restrictive, because they restrict which cars ''car'' and ''one'' are referring to. ("The car is fancier than the one" would make little sense.) By contrast, in "John's beautiful wife," ''beautiful'' is (presumably) non-restrictive: "John's wife" identifies the woman sufficiently, but "beautiful" adds additional information. Restrictive modifiers are also called ''defining'', ''identifying'', or ''necessary''; non-restrictive ones are also called ''non-defining'', ''non-identifying'', ''descriptive'', or ''unnecessary'' (though this last term can be misleading). In certain cases, generally when restrictiveness is marked Syntactically through the lack of commas, restrictive modifiers are called ''integrated'' and non-restrictive ones are called ''non-integrated'' or ''supplementary''. RESTRICTIVENESS IN ENGLISH ''that'' or by a zero relative pronoun (see '' English Relative Clauses '' for details on when this is possible), non-restrictive clauses never are. For example:
(Many traditional grammarians insist that ''which'' would be incorrect in the former example; see '' Disputed English Grammar ''.) Note that while English does not consistently mark ordinary adjectives for restrictiveness, they can be marked by moving them into relative clauses. For example, "the red car is fancier than the blue one" can be rewritten as, "the car that's red is fancier than the one that's blue," and "John's beautiful wife" can be rewritten as "John's wife, who is beautiful." English-speakers do not generally find such locutions necessary, however. RESTRICTIVENESS IN SPANISH Spanish is notable for marking all adjectives for restrictiveness: restrictive adjectives follow their nouns, while non-restrictive ones precede them. Some languages, such as German and Japanese , do not mark restrictiveness explicitly. Finally, some languages are like English: French tends to mark restrictive clauses in the same way as English, and the Hebrew Academy endorses English-style punctuation (though it is not in universal use among Hebrew-speakers). SOURCES On the intonation question, see Beverly Colins and Inger M. Mees, ''Practical Phonetics and Phonology'', Routledge 2003. SEE ALSO |
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