Semantic and syntactic problems in using relative clauses in english of yendinh high school students

Overview of relative clauses A relative clause, also called an adjective clause, is a dependent clause that modifies a noun or a pronoun by making it more specific or adding additional

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TRỊNH ĐÌNH LAN

Semantic and syntactic problems in using relative clauses

in English of Yendinh high school students

(Những vấn đề về ngữ nghĩa và cú pháp trong sử dụng mệnh đề quan hệ

Tiếng Anh của học sinh trường Yên Định)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: Methodology Code: 60.14.10

Hanoi, 2011

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

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TRỊNH ĐÌNH LAN

Semantic and syntactic problems in using relative clauses

in English of Yendinh high school students

(Những vấn đề về ngữ nghĩa và cú pháp trong sử dụng mệnh đề quan hệ

Tiếng Anh của học sinh trường Yên Định)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: Methodology Code: 60.14.10 Supervisor : Dr Hà Cẩm Tâm

Hanoi, 2011

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION page i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

I 1 Rationale 1

I 2 Objectives of the study 1

I 3 Research Question 1

I 4 Scope of the study 1

I 5 Significance of the study 2

I 6 Methodology 2

I 7 Organization of the study 2

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1 1 Overview of relative clauses 4

1 2 Syntactic features of relative clauses 4

1 2 1 Components of relative clauses 4

1 2 2 Types of relative clauses 5

1 2 2 1 Finite relative clauses 5

1 2 2 1 1 The uses of relativizers 6

1 2 2 1 2 Relative clauses with adverbial gaps 12

1 2 3 Positions of relative clauses 14

1 3 Semantic features of relative clauses 16

1 3 1 Restrictive relative clauses 16

1 3 2 Non - Restrictive relative clauses 18

1 3 3 Finite relative clauses 19

1 4 Review of previous researches in the area 21

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY 23

2 1 Research question 23

2 2 Design of the study 23

2 2 1 Participants 23

2 2 2 Data collection instruments 23

2 2 3 Data collection 24

2 2 4 Analytical framework 24

2 2 5 Data analysis 26

2 2 5 1 Exercise 1 26

2 2 5 2 Exercise 2 29

2 2 5 3 Exercise 3 31

PART C: CONCLUSION 33

I Major findings 33

II Implications 34

III Limitations and suggestions for further study 34

REFERENCES 36 APPENDIX 1 I APPENDIX 2 IV

I 2 Objectives of the study

The study aims to find out semantic and syntactic problems of Yendinh high school students’ in using relative clauses in English in order that teachers can help them improve their English

I 3 Research Question

In this paper, the following question would be addressed:

What problems in using English relative clauses in terms of semantics and syntactics do high school students often have?

I 4 Scope of the study

The research question mentioned above has already implied that the research is focused only on:

 full relative clauses in English

 high school students

The 10th graders at Yendinh High School are approximately 16 years of age They come from the villages surrounding the school Most of their parents are farmers whose main work is doing farming So the students here do not have good conditions to learn English Moreover, they have different learning abilities and have different attitudes towards learning English: some are learning for the entrance exams to colleges or universities, some are learning only for graduating the final exams and others are learning for nothing, i.e they cannot identify what they learn English for They consider English as a subject they have to learn at school Additionally, most of our students have low English proficiency They have learnt English for four years at secondary schools However, their English background knowledge has been limited When they come to the 10th form, it is surprising that they have limited vocabulary and grammatical structures For some students, the things they have learnt at secondary school seem to be completely new at the moment

With the above mentioned aims and due to limited time and size for a minor thesis, I would like to deal with written test only The test for students is taken out from books, textbooks, grammar books and reference books in English

I 5 Significance of the study

It is hoped that the findings of the study would help teachers and students to overcome the problems and could improve their English performance, especially in using relative clauses

I 6 Methodology

Quantitative and qualitative method was applied for this thesis A written test was used as data collection instrument Data collection was administered to 40 high school students to get information for the study

I 7 Organization of the study

This paper is divided into three parts:

Part A: Introduction includes rationale, objectives, research question, scope of the study, significance of the study, methodology, organization of the study are presented

Part B: Development consists of two chapters:

Chapter 1 provides theoretical background

Chapter 2 is the study It includes methodology and outlines the study design, participants, data collection instruments, data collection, analytical framework, and data analysis Part C: Conclusion offers major findings, implications, limitations and suggestions for further study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, a brief description of various propositions about the relative clauses will be discussed It is divided into three main sections Firstly, section 1.1 is the overview of relative clauses Secondly, section 1 2 discusses syntactic features of relative clauses Next

is section 1 3 which discusses semantic features of relative clauses The last section 1 4 reviews previous researches in the area

1 1 Overview of relative clauses

A relative clause, also called an adjective clause, is a dependent clause that modifies a noun or a pronoun by making it more specific or adding additional information about it Relative clauses are typically found after a noun phrase and provide some information about the person or thing indicated by that noun phrase They are sometimes called

‘adjective clauses' because, like many adjectives, they often describe and help to identify the person or thing being talked about (Yule, 1998, p 240)

Relative clauses in the following sections are explored not only with syntactic features but

also semantic feature

1 2 Syntactic features of relative clauses

In this section, the components of relative clauses and their possible positions of relative clauses are discussed first, after that is types of relative clauses which are classified according to their internal structures

1 2 1 Components of relative clauses

A relative clause is a group of words (relativizer, subject and verb) that comes after a noun and modifies and/or restrict that noun, which is called the antecedent noun The relative clause gets embedded in the main clause of the sentence; it becomes a subordinate clause within the main clause

Note how the second sentences below are turned into relative clause and embedded in the sentences (A = antecedents noun; R = relativizer; S = subject; V = verb)

The person was Bob Geldof - He was responsible for the concert

The person who was responsible for the concert was Bob Geldof

A R/S V

It was a program - Geldof is not likely to forget the program

It was a program that Geldof is not likely to forget

A R S V

When discussing relative clauses, we will focus on three key components: the head noun, the relativizer, and the gap The head noun is the noun modified by the relative clause The

relativizer is the word, such as who or that …, which introduces the relative clause It refers

to the same person or thing as the head noun The gap is the location of the missing constituent in the relative clause All relative clauses have a missing constituent, which again corresponds in the meaning to the head noun

Thus, consider the relative clause construction:

… the diamond earrings that Mama wore /\ (fict)

The head noun is earrings

The relativizer is that, referring to the ‘earrings’

The gap occurs in the direct object position, after the verb wore The underlying meaning

of the relative clause is that ‘Mama wore earrings’ (Biber et al, 1999)

1 2 2 Types of relative clauses

Relative clauses have two main types according to their structures They are the finite relative clauses which contain a finite verb as the main verb in the clauses and the non-finite relative clauses which only contain a non-finite verb as the main verb for the finite verb is often omitted The study would like to focus only on finite relative clauses (full relative clauses) due to the scope of the study

1 2 2 1 Finite relative clauses

They are relative clauses with the serving of a relative pronoun The relative pronoun usually acts as the subject or object of the verb in the relative clause; sometimes, it can play the role of adjuncts The most common relative pronouns are that, which, who, whom, whose

1 2 2 1 1 The use of relativizers

In Standard English, relative clauses can be formed using eight different relativizers: which, who, whom, whose, that, where, when and why The following are examples:

1 The lowest pressure ratio which will give an acceptable performance is always

2 The man who robbed you has been arrested

3 The man whom I saw told me to come back today

4 The film is about a spy whose wife betrays him

5 Well, that's the only way that this can be assessed (Biber et al, 1999, p 608)

6 I could lead you to the shop where I bought it

7 That is the period when he lived here

8 That is the reason why he spoke

(Quirk, 1987, p 380)

In addition, the relativizer can be omitted with many relative clauses (referred to as the zero relativizer) For example:

The next thing she knows, she is talking to Danny

To some extent the choice of relativizers is determined grammatically by the role of the gap in the relative clause Thus, the pronoun ‘whom’ and the zero relativizer (with rare exceptions) are used only with non-subject gaps; the pronoun ‘whose’ is used only with

possessive/genitive gaps; and the relative adverbs: ‘where, when and why’ are used only

with adverbial gaps However, the choice among relativizers is influenced by a number of additional factors These other factors include: register, restrictive vs non-restrictive function, and animate (human) vs non-animate head noun In addition, non-dialects include other relativizers, which are briefly covered in the following sections:

There is considerable dialect variation in the range of relativizers used in conversation For example, the form ‘as’ is sometimes used as a relativizer, as in:

Well, I know one person as'11 eat it

The wh-word ‘what’ is somewhat more common as a relativizer in Br.English conversational texts, although it is much rarer than the standard forms: who, which, and that Here are some examples:

And you see that truck what just went by

Gotta makes sure she's got the book what I had last week

Now we will consider only the standard set of relativizers

There is a complex set of interrelated factors influencing the choice among relativizers, resulting in skiking differences in their distributions Later sections provide a detailed discussion of these factors while overall patterns are introduced here

The relativizers ‘that, which’, to a lesser extent ‘who’ are the most flexible in their use, in terms of the gap position in which they can occur and the meanings that they can express

As a result, they are by far the most frequent forms The most common use of all three pronouns is with subject gaps Subject gaps:

2 The book which is on the table is mine

3 Do you want a cup of tea that's been brewing for three days?

(Afar, 1989, p 238) However, all three of these relative pronouns can also be used with other gap positions: Direct object gaps:

1 She came up with all sorts of things that she would like for the new

3 He took an instant dislike to Leroy, who he attacked twice

Other gaps (adverbial or complement of preposition):

1 You have to pay for it in the year that you do not make any profit

2 the mustard pot, which he has been sitting on

In contrast, the other relativizers are restricted to a specific gap position and are thus rarer overall: ‘whom and zero’ to non-subject gaps: ‘whose’ to possessive/genitive gaps; and ‘where’, ‘when’ and ‘why’ to adverbial gaps, ‘who’ is restricted in meaning in that it occurs only with animate (usually personal/human) head nouns In contrast, the pronouns ‘that and which’ usually occur with inanimate head nouns, but in certain circumstances they can also occur with animate head nouns But this difference means that

‘that, which’ are more common than ‘who’ in most registers, since inanimate head nouns taking a relative clause are generally more common than animate head with a relative clause In conversation and fiction, animate differences are most commonly made with either a personal pronoun or a proper name, which rarely allow modification with a relative

clause In academic prose, there are relatively few animate references at all However, the communicative focus of news, with its emphasis on human, result in a more frequent use

of relative clauses with the pronoun ‘who’ For example, a 20-year-old woman who has

been missing for a week… (news)

Finally, the register distribution of ‘which vs that vs the zero relativizer’ also reflects the stylistic associations of these forms The relative pronouns beginning with the letter 'wh' are often considered to be more literate and appropriate to careful language

The pronoun 'that' and 'the zero relativizer' have a more colloquial flavor and are preferred

in conversation (Biber et al, 1999)

The relative pronoun 'who' is distinctive in that it is used almost exclusively with an animate (human) head noun

The relative pronoun 'who' occurs almost exclusively with human heads and in the written registers, there is a very strong tendency for a relative clause with human head noun to use 'who' rather than 'which' or 'that':

Team Millar rider, Mc William, who is still looking for a 500 Grand Prix finish, had a constructive finish

At the other extreme, the relative pronoun 'which' rarely occurs with an animate head Although 'which' is attested in conversation as a relative pronoun with animate heads, this occurs so rarely that it might be considered as a speech error:

She's just the type of person which everybody would avoid to speak to

By contrast, relative clause with 'that' freely occurs with animate heads, especially in conversation In fact, for many head nouns referring to humans, 'that' is almost as common

as 'who' in conversation:

'that' is a possible alternative after: all, everyone, everybody, no one, nobody, and those:

These same head nouns also commonly take a zero relativizer in conversation:

Who's the ugliest person you've ever seen?

I thought of a girl I used to know called Louise

 Who versus whom, that, and zero

The relativizers 'who, whom' are both used with animate head nouns, but the choice between them is clear-cut: 'who' is usually used with subject gap positions, while 'whom' is used with non-subject gaps

+ 'who' with subject gap:

This gentle man is the doctor who examined the body

+ 'whom' with non-subject gap:

While 'who' can also occur with subject gaps, this option is rare (and stigmatized in written texts):

There is a girl who I work with who's pregnant

'who' is usually used instead of 'whom', especially in speaking, 'whom' is generally used in

very formal English:

'that' is more commonly used than 'who' as a viable alternative to 'whom' This choice is especially preferred in colloquial discourse, apparently to avoid the formal overtones of 'whom', and possibly to avoid making a choice between 'who, and whom':

There may be people that we do not know of

She took up with the first boy that she came near to liking

However, with non-subject gaps it is much more common to completely avoid the choice among the relative pronouns by omitting the relativizers altogether Interestingly, this alternative is the preferred choice in both written and spoken registers:

You are one person I can talk to

For the most part, ‘that’ and ‘zero relativizer’ are alternative to 'whom' only with restrictive relative clauses; non-restrictive clauses with animate head nouns and non-subject gaps almost always take 'whom':

This man, whom Elethia never saw, opened a locally famous restaurant

The relativizers 'which and that' are similar in their grammatical potential They are both grammatical with a wide range of gap positions and with animate or in-animate heads However, the preceding sections have identified a number of important differences in their

actual patterns of use

With animate heads, 'which' is rare, while 'that' is more common, especially in conversation A more important difference is that 'which' commonly occurs with non-restrictive relative clauses, depending on the register In contrast, 'that' rarely occurs with non-restrictive clauses When 'that' does mark a non-restrictive clause, it often occurs in a series of post-modifiers and is used for special stylistic effects (especially in fiction):

1 Here one may say to those sliding lights, those fumbling airs, that breath and bend over the bed itself here you can neither touch nor destroy.(fiction)

2 He gazed at the yellow, stained wall with all the spots which dead bugs, that had

The American English preference for that over which reflects a willingness to use a form with colloquial associations more widely in written contexts than Br.English

The form 'that' is used for a wide range of grammatical functions in English, including relativizer, demonstrative pronoun, demonstrative determiner, and complementizer As a

result, when the head of the relative clause is a demonstrative pronoun, the relativizer that

is strongly dispreferred, as it would create a sequence of two identical or like elements This pattern holds all four demonstrative pronouns (this, that, those, these)

Dispreferred patterns, with that:

What's this that I'm looking at?

Preferred patterns, with which:

I recognized a silence like that which pervades a church after a service

In contrast, relative clauses with indefinite pronouns as head have a strong preference for that, instead of 'which' as the relativizer The motivation for this preference might relate to the colloquial associations of indefinite pronouns

Dispreferred patterns, with 'which':

There is something which everybody can do to alleviate the problem

Preferred patterns, with 'that':

It's just something that we can do I am afraid

However, it is equally common for relative clauses with indefinite pronouns as head to omit the relativizer altogether:

I will give you anything you want my darling

The relative pronoun 'whose' has a syntactic role comparable to the possessive determiners (my, your, etc) and is typically used to mark a possessive relationship between a human head noun and some other noun phrases, with the two together comprising the gap in the relative clause :

The friend whose dog I'm looking after is in Australia (Eastwood, 1994, p 636)

Thus, the underlining meaning of the relative clause in this case, with the gap included, is

I'm looking after the friend's dog

By extension, ‘whose’ can be used to mark possessive relations with collective entities,

such as corporations, government agencies, clubs, societies, and committee:

A shipping group, whose profits dived last year by near a third, has told shareholders to expect an even lower result for 1993

In fact, 'whose' can further used to mark other genitive relationships with completely inanimate, sometimes abstract, head nouns:

This is a way of proceeding in conceptual matters whose method is to define away any inconvenient difficulty

An alternative to 'whose' with inanimate head nouns is phrase 'of-which':

We have an antique table, the top of which has jade inlay, (cf Whose top has jade

An alternative way of introducing a relative clause with 'of-which' is to front only the prepositional phrase 'of-which', leaving the rest of the noun phrase to follow it in its normal position in the relative clause:

He joined a dining club of which the motto was, the whole, the good, and the beautiful

Finally, a genitive relation can also be marked by using a post-modifying prepositional phrase with the preposition ‘with’

 The zero relativizer

Speakers and writers can also opt to omit the relativizer altogether in restrictive relative clauses, thereby avoiding the choice among relativizer This alternative is possible in Standard English whenever the gap is not in subject position Clauses without relative pronouns are very common in informal English For example:

The woman Gary met knows your sister

The parcel 1 posted on Monday still has not got there (Eastwood, 1994, p 636)

Relative pronouns usually cannot be left out when they are the subjects However, in some conversational varieties, there is a marginally non-standard usage in which the relativizer is omitted with the gap in subject position This variant occurs most commonly when the main clause has an existential 'there' construction:

There is a nice little stream run through the valley

There's a lot of people won't let you do it

There aren't many people say that nowadays (Biber et al, 1999, p 619)

1 2 2 1 2 Relative clauses with adverbial gaps

There are four major structural variants for relative clauses with adverbial gaps The choice that conforms most to prescriptive tradition is to use the relativizer 'which' preceded by the preposition that marks the adverbial element in the relative clause:

The apartments in which no one lives

The ladder on which I was standing began to slip (Thomson, 1989, p 83)

In these constructions, the preposition + relativizer stands for the entire prepositional

phrase in the relative clause Thus, the relative clause in the sentence: The apartments in

which no one lives has the meaning ‘no one lives in the apartment’, and the relative

clause in the sentence: The ladder on which I was standing began to slip has the meaning

‘I was standing on the ladder’

A second option for adverbial gaps is to leave prepositions stranded in the relative clause, making the site of the gap The relativizer is often omitted with this option:

Some of the houses I go to

The third option is simply to omit the preposition altogether, providing no surface marker

of the adverbial gap The relativizer is also often omitted in these structures:

The time that I began (fict)

A place I would like to go (conversation)

The day that he left (conversation)

The way I look at it (conversation)

Finally, relative clauses function as adverbs that specifically mark adverbial gaps: (1)

‘where’ for place adverbials, (2)’when’ for time adverbials, and (3) 'why’ for reason adverbials These forms do not need to occur with a preposition, since they substitute for

an entire adverbial (while the other relativizer substitutes only for a noun phrase):

1) Although relative adverb ‘where’ occurs commonly in four registers with adverbial gaps, the registers use different head nouns with relative clauses of this type In conversation, fiction and news, these head nouns typically refer to physical locations:

This association is strongest in fiction:

The place where the savages had vanished (fict)

In academic prose, in contrast, relative clauses with ‘where’ are typically used to mark logical rather than physical locations:

The kind of situation where this type of work is helpful

The points where further inquiry needs to be made

This pattern holds even with the head noun ‘area’, which has a literal meaning referring to

a physical location but is often used to refer to a knowledge domain:

Farmers are slow to see management as an area where the training could help

(acad)

2) The relative adverb 'when' is much less common than 'where' overall, although it does frequently occur with the head noun ‘time’ in all four registers:

I cannot think of a time when I would be going by myself

It occurred at a time when abolitionist leaders hope for improved treatment of slaves (acad)

Relative clauses with the head noun ‘time’ are even more common with the zero relativizer and no preposition:

I have the authority to leave any time I want (fict)

It's time they paid money back (news)

You say that every time ‘you come in this door (conversation)

Equivalent forms with prepositions would be difficult to form in many of these cases (e.g

Every time at which you come in this door…)

A few head nouns are moderately common with both ‘where and when’ as relative adverbs In conversation, the head noun ‘bit’, referring to a part of a movie or story, commonly occurs with both relativizers:

You know the bit where the man jumps inside Whoopie Goldberg, (conversation) But the bit when he's finished that

Similarly, in academic prose the head noun ‘cases’ can occur with either 'where' or 'when':

The contrastive nature of linguistic categories is clear cases where the category label contains two words (Acad)

One of the main applications of the scan score is in difficult cases when accurate estimation of disease activity will have important therapeutic implications (Acad)

3) The relativizer 'why' commonly occurs with only one head noun 'reason':

The reason why I cannot go is that I do not have time (Eastwood, 1994, p 636) You are the reason why I left school (conversation)

This combination is common in all four registers; especially in the relatively fixed expression ‘there is no reason why’: here are two typical examples:

There's no reason why you should not go out for a drink with him

There's no reason why differing model forms cannot be used to provide differing pictorial displays

In conversation, as might be expected, the head noun 'reason' is relatively common with the zero relativizer:

That's the reason he cannot go You see (Eastwood, 1994, p 636)

1 2 3 Positions of relative clauses

Generally, we can use relative clauses to give further information about something or someone when we mention them in some sentence A relative clause is put immediately after the noun or the nominal group which refers to the person, thing or group being talked about

The man who came into the room was small and slender (Thao, 2007, p 11) Opposite is St Paul’s Church, where you can hear some lovely music

Sometimes, a relative clause can be found after the following pronouns: indefinite

pronouns such as someone, anyone, and everything It is sometimes used after some, many,

much, several, all, and those

e.g This is something that I’m very proud of

Karen Blixen was being feted by everyone who knew her work

Like many who met him in those days I was soon charmed

…the feelings of those who have suffered from the effects of crime

In written English, a relative clause (with which as relative pronoun) can be used after the

primary clause (separated with the primary clause by a comma) to say something about the whole situation described the primary clause, rather than about someone or something mentioned in it

e.g Minute computers need only minute amounts of power, which means that they will run on small batteries

I never met Brando again, which was a pity (Thao, 2007, p 11)

When a relative clause is connected to a main clause, it can be placed in medial position (i.e in the middle) or in final position (i.e at the end) of the main clause

The relative clauses in the following sentences are in medial position Notice that the relative clauses in the following sentences are modifying the subject (The man, The woman) of the main clause:

The man who lives next door has a cat

The woman that the man wants to marry has a large dog (Yule, 2007, p 245)

Notice once again that the relative clauses above are modifying the subject (The man, The woman) of the main clause Relative clauses typically occur in medial position when they are modifying the subject of the main clause

If we look more carefully at these examples, we can see that the relative pronoun in the

sentence: ‘The man who lives next door has a cat’ is a subject relative and in: ‘The woman

that the man wants to marry has a large dog’, it is an object relative Relative clauses tend

to occur in medial position when there is a subject-subject (S-S) and a subject-object (S-O) relationship between the antecedent noun and the relative noun

When relative clauses occur in final position, the relationship tends to be object-subject S) or object-object (O-O) between the antecedent noun and the relative noun

(O-e.g The man has a cat that likes the large dog (Yule, 2007, p 246)

In the above sentence, the structural connection is between the object of the main clause

and the subject of the relative clause (O-S) In the following example, notice how the connection is between the object of the main clause and the object of the relative clause (O-O)

e.g The woman has a large dog that the cat likes (Yule, 2007, p 246)

1 3 Semantic features of relative clauses

As we know, relative clauses are classified into two types: (1) restrictive relative clauses, and (2) non-restrictive relative clauses In the following section, I would like to discuss the semantic features of each type

1 3 1 Restrictive relative clauses

Restrictive relative clauses are also called 'defining' relative clauses because they define or restrict the reference of the antecedent noun They help to identify or classify the person or thing being talked about (Thao, 2007)

1 Although in practical situations, nominal groups as well as relative clauses are not often used separately but in combination with other language elements to form larger units, I decided to examine relative clauses not in clauses but in nominal

It should be more convenient to look through all nominal groups’ constituents In Hallidayan grammar, the nominal group can include such constituents as Thing, Classifier,

Epithet, Qualifier, Numerative, and Deictic when we look at its experiential structure

These terms carry the senses of semantic relations, not those of syntactic ones Thing names class of items in the real world As the semantic core of the nominal group, it may

be a common noun, a proper noun, or a pronoun Classifiers are those elements that surround a thing to indicate particular subclasses of the class represented by the thing It is very usual that several classifiers cluster around a thing to indicate subclasses of more concreteness A classifier can be an adjective, a participle, or a noun It is theoretically said that the combination ‘Classifier’

Thing’ is enough to name all issues acceptably Epithets don’t create any new acceptable meaning but inform a characteristic of the referred class/subclass as additional information helping the converser to refer to a group of more particular items of a subclass Therefore, they are adjectives Like epithets, Qualifiers inform characteristics of the referred in the

form of post-positioned elements, whose main types are relative clauses, appositive clauses

or prepositional phrases In other words, Qualifiers can play the same role as adjectives in nominal groups Deictics all share the meaning of ‘pointing’, i.e indicating whether or not some specific subsets of the thing are meant They fulfill the function demonstratively (as

the, this, that, these, those do), possessively (by possessives and genitives as my, your, his, one’s, Mary’s…) or interrogatively ((as what (ever), which (ever), whose (ever)…)

Numeratives indicate numerical features of the subset represented by other elements of the nominal group They are quantifying numeratives (or quantitatives) and ordering numeratives (or ordinatives) which can be both exact and inexact (Thao, 2007)

In this section, I would like to pay my special attention to the qualifying role of relative clauses in nominal groups Like ranking elements of the nominal group, the Qualifier also has the function of characterizing the Thing; or in other words, it specifies which member

or members of the class designated by the noun Thus, the Deictic the is usually used at the

first place of the group, signaling that the characteristic in question is definite; and when

the Deictic a is involved, it gives the sense of typical exemplifying at the beginning of the

groups But the characterization here is in terms of some process with which the Thing is, directly or indirectly, a participant In the case that the qualifier is a relative clause, the Thing is the participant in a major process (while the qualifier is a prepositional phrase, the Thing will be the participant in a minor process)

e.g.: …the pobble who had no toe

Deictic Thing Qualifier

Possessor Process:

relational

Possessed

In the example above, it is the Thing pobble which plays the role of a participant

(Possessor) in the relational process presented in the relative clause after it

2 Not only finite relative clauses can specify or give information about a person or a thing denoted by the Thing of a nominal group, but non-finite clauses can also do the same functions

e.g (words underlined denote Thing)

Do you know the woman talking to Tom?

The boy injured in the accident was taken to the hospital

In a relative clause of this kind (both finite and non-finite), usually, the information provided is crucial in understanding the meaning of the noun it follows For example, in

the sentence: The house is being renovated, it is not necessarily clear which house is being

renovated because there is no defining information In other words, the purpose of the relative clause here is to clearly define who or what we are talking about Without this information, it would be difficult to know who or what is meant This kind of relative clauses is called defining relative clauses (Thao, 2007)

e.g The boy who ran away was Peter’s son

The relative clause who ran away answers the question ‘which boy?’ So, it is easy to

understand that the clause plays the role of the Qualifier of the core noun, i.e to define it The defining relative clause is not separated with the defined noun by any punctuation Again, defining relative clauses can be finite (full relative clauses with Wh-words (accept

what) or that as relative pronouns as discussed in the previous sections) or non- finite (in

the discussed forms) Many examples mentioned above prove this

1 3 2 Non - Restrictive relative clauses

Non-restrictive relative clauses are also called 'non-defining' relative clauses because they

do not define or restrict the reference of the antecedent noun They only give extra

information about an antecedent

Hallidayan grammar interprets the relation between clauses in the clause complex by two systemic dimensions: ‘These two (systems) together will provide the functional framework for describing the clause complex’ (Halliday, 1994)

(i) the system of interdependency or ‘tactic’ system, parataxis and hypotaxis which is general to all complexes – word, group, phrase and clause alike – which is the relation of modifying where one element modifies another paratactically (the elements have equal status) or hypotactically (between a dependent element and its dominant);

(ii) the logical-semantic system, expansion (with three ways of expanding a clause: elaborating; extending and enhancing) and projection (a representation of a linguistic representation by quoting, reporting, projecting), ‘which is specifically an inter-clausal

relation’ (Halliday, 1994)

Relative clauses appear together with the relation called hypotactic elaboration This means that the relative clause as a dependent clause serves to elaborate the meaning of a part of or the whole independent clause in a clause complex by specifying or describing it The

relative clause playing this role often belongs to Non-defining Relative Clauses which

provide interesting additional information which is not essential to understanding the meaning of the whole complex To be clearer, they are subordinate clauses giving a supplementary, optional comment in relation to a part of or the whole of the main clause or sometimes subsequent information to the previous clause

e.g She married the rich old man, which didn’t surprise anyone

( the marriage didn’t surprise anyone)

The meeting finished late, which didn’t allow me to see you on time

(The late finishing of the meeting didn’t allow me to see you on time)

In other words, whereas defining relative clauses give a particular subset of the general class suggested by the central noun to make it specific, non-defining relative clauses give

‘further characterization of something that is taken to be already fully specific’ (Halliday,

1994, p 227) Moreover, correct punctuation is essential in non-defining relative clauses Unlike the defining clause, the non-defining clause is separated from the primary clause by

a comma or sometime by a dash If the non-defining relative clause occurs in the middle of the clause complex, a comma is put before the relative pronoun and at the end of the

clause In that case, the sequence in the clause complex will be α <<=>>β in which α is the symbol of the primary clause, and β is the symbol of the secondary clause, α = β is the

notation of hypotation If the non-defining relative clause occurs at the end, a comma is put

before the relative pronoun In that case the sequence will be α ^ = β Finite and non-finite

relative clauses both can serve as hypotactic elaborations (Thompson, 1996, p 202)

1 3 3 Finite relative clauses

In ‘An Introduction to Functional Grammar’ (1994) Halliday grouped these clauses into 3 groups:

(i) Clauses with which whose domain is either the whole of the primary clause or some

part of it’s (which is more than a nominal group.) However, the former case is less