Multi-Clause Sentencesent of the NP:
(34) a. The claim, which is fully supported by the evidence,...
b. The claim which is fully supported by the evidence...
The non-restrictive relative, (34a), refers to some claim and then adds the
supplementary information that the claim is fully supported by the evi-
dence. The reader/hearer is assumed to know which claim is being referred
to without this extra information. The restrictive relative, (34b), refers to a
claim that is assumed to be identifiable only by using the information in the
relative clause to distinguish the intended claim from other claims.
One syntactic effect of this difference between restrictive and non-
restrictive relatives is that the head of a non-restrictive, but generally not of
a restrictive, may be a proper noun:
(35) a. Bill, who is well known to all of us, will sing his favorite tune
“Home on the Range.”
b. *Bill who is well known to all of us will sing his favorite tune
“Home on the Range.”One explanation for this is that the referents of proper nouns are assumed
to be identifiable by hearers/readers without extra information. Restrictive
relatives, whose information is assumed to be essential for the identification
of the referent, are therefore redundant with proper nouns. Non-restric-
tive relatives modifying proper nouns, whose information is assumed to be
supplementary, are not redundant. We do, however, find sentences such as
the following, which might be used in a situation in which there are several
individuals called Bill. In that case the usual assumption associated with
proper names may be suspended and the specific Bill being referred to can
be identified by a restrictive clause:
(36) The Bill who has the rose between his teeth...We turn now to some formal differences between restrictive and non-
restrictive relatives that we mentioned above. Restrictive relative clauses may
be introduced by either a wh-word, that, or zero. Non-restrictive clauses
may be introduced only by wh-words.
(37) a. Mr. Pferdfeld, whom we have just met,...
b. *Mr. Pferdfeld, that we have just met,...