How Can Sentences Work Like Adjectives? The Syntax and Semantics of Relative Clauses
We can put whole clauses inside other phrases, but what does that do to their structure and their meaning? In this week's episode, we take a look at the syntax and semantics of relative clauses: how these clauses kind of look like adjectives; how using them creates islands from which words can't escape; and how moving things around in them throws semantic variables into the sentence setup.
This is Topic #89!
This week's tag language: Tajik!
Related videos:
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What Questions Can't We Ask? Syntactic Islands: • What Questions Can't We Ask? Syntactic Isl...
Last episode:
How Do Verbs Cause Things? Splitting the Verb Phrase: • How Do Verbs Cause Things? Splitting the V...
Other of our syntax videos:
How Can We Tell What Roles Nouns Play? Case Theory: • How Can We Tell What Roles Nouns Play? Cas...
What Changes in a Sentence When We Swap Verbs? Raising and Control Verbs: • What Changes in a Sentence When We Swap Ve...
How Do Pronouns Even Work? Binding Theory: • Binding Theory and Interpreting Pronouns
Our website also has extra content about this week's topic, on other kinds of relative clauses, at: http://www.thelingspace.com/episode-89/
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Sources:
Much of the material in this week's episode is based on Semantics in Generative Grammar, by Irene Heim and Angelika Kratzer.
The material's also well-covered in Elizabeth Coppock's Semantics Boot Camp (http://eecoppock.info/semantics-boot-..., and Anders Schoubye's Formal Semantics Notes (http://schoubye.org/teaching/Formal-S....
Looking forward to next time!