On the information status of appositive relative clauses

  • Authors:

  • Todor Koev

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Linguistics, Rutgers University

  • Venue:
  • AC'11 Proceedings of the 18th Amsterdam colloquim conference on Logic, Language and Meaning
  • Year:
  • 2011

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Existing semantic theories of appositive relative clauses (ARCs) assume that ARCs contribute asserted but not at-issue content (Böer & Lycan [4], Bach [3], Chierchia & McConnell-Ginet [5], Potts [13], AnderBois et al. [2], Murray [12]). In this paper I demonstrate that the information status of ARCs depends on their linear position in the clause: clause-medial ARCs are not at-issue whereas clause-final ARCs can behave like regular at-issue content. I propose a uniform one-dimensional semantics under which ARCs are conjuncts that can acquire at-issue status if the issue raised by the main clause has been terminated. The idea is formally implemented in Dynamic Predicate Logic (Groenendijk & Stokhof [9]) enriched with propositional variables (AnderBois et al. [2]).