SEMANTICS OF NONRESTRICTIVE RELATIVE CLAUSES IN ENGLISH

Abstract

Subordinate relative clauses are of two types: restrictive and nonrestrictive. In Bulgarian, the punctuation of the two types is the same, with the commas being obligatory to mark the clause boundaries; in English, in contrast, in the first case commas are obligatorily not used while in the second they are usually used. Restrictive relative clauses distinguish the NP referent from the other referents in the same class, and nonrestrictive clauses provide additional information. This paper aims at establishing the nature of this additional information in order to facilitate the clauses’ differentiation with the purpose of enabling Bulgarians to use correct punctuation. To achieve this examples of clauses from scientific publications in English in the field of forestry and landscape architecture are discussed.