Title

On Restrictive and Non-restrictive Relative Clauses in Mandarin Chinese

Author

Jo-wang Lin

Genre

Article  

Pages

199-240

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Language

English

Key words

Relative Clauses, Restrictive, Non-restrictive

Abstrac

    Whether or not Chinese has non-restrictive relative clauses has been very controversial. This paper reviews existing arguments for and against treating pre-determiner or post-determiner relatives as non-rest rictive relatives in the literature. I show that arguments for analyzing pre-determiners or post-determiner relatives as non- restrictive relatives are not convincing. All relative clauses that occur with a determiner should be analyzed as restrictive. However, it is too strong a claim to say that non- restrictive relative clauses do not exist in Chinese. When the antecedent of a relative clause is a proper name, the non-restrictive interpretation is allowed if the relative clause describes a more or less permanent or stable property.