The structure and interpretation of non restrictive relatives: Evidence from relative pronoun pied piping
In this paper, we investigate the structure and interpretation of English nonrestrictive relative clauses, also often called appositive relatives and sometimes supplemental relatives. We propose that in non restrictive relatives, relative pronouns are interpreted in situ within the pied piped constituent at LF, using RoothHamblin alternative computation (Hamblin, 1973; Rooth, 1985, 1992, a.o. Evidence comes from the presence of intervention effects in RPPP; intervention effects (Beck, 2006; Sauerland Heck, 2003, a.o. can be used to diagnose regions of alternative computation (see Kotek Erlewine, to appear; Erlewine Kotek, 2014) The proposal here has the consequence that non restrictive relatives are fundamentally proposition denoting (Del Gobbo, 2007) in contrast to restrictive relatives which are property denoting. Our proposal helps explain two differences between restrictive and non restrictive RCs in English. First, non restrictive relatives must use relative pronouns whereas restrictive relatives also have a that/ complementizer option. The relative pronoun strategy must be used in non restrictive relatives to arrive at the propositional denotation. Second, RPPP in non restrictive relatives can be substantially larger than in restrictive relatives. This is due to the semantics of Rooth Hamblin alternative computation, used to interpret relative pronouns in non restrictive relatives, which is insensitive to syntactic barriers such as islands, although it is susceptible to intervention effects.