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]).
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Koev, T. (2012). On the Information Status of Appositive Relative Clauses. In: Aloni, M., Kimmelman, V., Roelofsen, F., Sassoon, G.W., Schulz, K., Westera, M. (eds) Logic, Language and Meaning. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7218. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31482-7_41
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31482-7_41
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