English Clause Types and Relativizer Dynamics in Singapore English

Understanding English Clause Structures

Relative Clauses

• Adnominal Relative Clauses

  These clauses depend on and refer back to a noun. They can be restrictive (e.g., 'The house that I bought is small,' where 'that' functions as a direct object) or non-restrictive (e.g., 'John, who is my brother, is tall'). Their syntactic function is to modify the noun, acting as the antecedent.

• Nominal Relative Clauses

  These clauses have no explicit antecedent; the relative pronoun acts like a noun (e.g., 'What I bought was a house').

• Sentential Relative Clauses

  In these clauses, the antecedent is a whole clause, with the relative pronoun referring back to the entire preceding clause.

Complement Clauses

Complement clauses function as complements of larger constructions. When a complement clause functions as a subject, it can be interposed (e.g., 'That they are hard-working is true') or extraposed (shifted to the end of the sentence, e.g., 'It is undeniable that they are hard-working').

Adverbial Subordinate Clauses

Adverbial subordinate clauses function as adjuncts, indicating place, time, manner, or other circumstances within another clause (e.g., 'I go to the gym because I want to be fit').

Coordination in English

Types of Coordination

• Phrasal Coordination

  This typically involves prepositional phrases (e.g., 'I may leave the car in the garage or outside').

• Symmetric Coordination

  The order of coordinates can be changed without a perceptible effect on the coordination.

• Asymmetric Coordination

  Involves temporal sequence or cause-consequence, where the order of elements is significant.

• Syndetic Coordination

  The coordinated construction is linked by an explicit coordinator (e.g., 'and', 'or').

• Asyndetic Coordination

  Unmarked coordination, where explicit coordinators are omitted (e.g., 'They offered us a choice of red wine, white wine, or beer').

• Layered Coordination

  One coordinated construction functions as a coordinate of a larger one (e.g., 'Kim works in a bank and Sam is a teacher, but Matt is unemployed').

• Gapped Coordination

  A non-initial part of the coordinated clause can be omitted (e.g., 'Her son lives in London and her daughter in Chicago').

Further Linguistic Considerations

• If a direct object (DO) is 'stranded' (fronted), refer to its predicate.

• For sentences with a coordinator like 'and', consider the 'coordinated construction'.

Relativizer Shifts in Singapore English Newspapers (1993-2016)

This paper investigates changes in relativization in Singapore English (SgE) broadsheet newspapers from 1993 to 2016.

Key Findings and Shifts

• Most significant changes include a sharp decline in the use of the 'which' relativizer in restrictive relative clauses (RRCs) with non-animate antecedents, complemented by the rise of 'that'.

• Another shift is the increased frequency of non-restrictive relative clauses (NRRCs) in SgE. The likely motivators for these changes are identified as colloquialization, densification, and prescriptivism.

• Relativizers such as 'who', 'whom', and 'whose' are typically reserved for human antecedents. 'Which' tends to be used predominantly for inanimate antecedents, while 'that' is available for both human and inanimate antecedents.

• The most common relativizers in English are 'which' or 'that', with 'who' also being quite common.

• One of the main factors responsible for the complementary trends in the use of 'which' is colloquialization, supported by the use of 'wh-' relative pronouns in more formal contexts, and 'that' and zero relativizers for more informal ones. Another contributing factor is the influence of prescriptivism, which states that 'that' and not 'which' should be used to introduce an RRC with a non-human antecedent.

• All three studies on SgE report a preference for 'that', 'which', and zero relativizers with non-human antecedents, and a preference for 'who', 'whom', and 'whose' for human antecedents.

• The use of 'which' relativizers in SgE is declining in frequency compared to 'that' relativizers. However, 'which' is still more common than 'that' in news writing. 'Whose' is the least frequent relativizer.

• 'Which' as a relative marker is being replaced by one or more alternatives, with 'that' being the most likely candidate.

• 'That' is used more in informal contexts and speech, while 'which' is preferred for formal writing.

Study Results

• 'Which' relativizers continue to decline in frequency of use, gradually being replaced by 'that' relativizers.

• The relativizers 'which' and 'that' are almost exclusively used for non-human nouns in both corpora.

• Key factors identified include: colloquialization, densification (or economization), and prescriptivism.