Chinese relative clauses: restrictive, descriptive or appositive? - Lear

FRANCESCA DEL GOBBO
(12) The woman that lost her luggage on the flight from Ithaca to New
York was pretty upset.
The infelicitous result of uttering (12) after (11) is due to the fact that,
because of the definite determiner in (12), the content of the restrictive
relative clause is presupposed, hence taken for granted. But nothing in the
context provided in (11) tells us that the woman lost her luggage. Thus, a
restrictive relative clause with a definite determiner cannot be uttered
felicitously after a sentence that does not take its truth for granted.
In Chinese, we find that the utterance of a relative clause modifying a
definite nominal in a context that does not take the truth of the relative for
granted does not yield a felicitous result. Consider the following group of
sentences:
(13) a. Na-ge [RC zai cong Beijing dao NiuYue lutu zhong diu-le
that-CL in from Beijing to New York travel middle lost-LE
xingli de] nuren xihuan zuo huoche.
luggage DE woman like sit train
‘That woman who lost her luggage on the flight from Beijing to
New York likes to travel by train.’
b. Na-ge [RC zai cong Beijing dao NiuYue lutu zhong diu-le
that-CL in from Beijing to New York travel middle lost-LE
xingli de] nuren bu xihuan zuo huoche.
luggage DE woman not like sit train
‘That woman who lost her luggage on the flight from Beijing to
New York doesn’t likes to travel by train.’
c. Na-ge [RC zai cong Beijing dao NiuYue lutu zhong diu-le
that-CL in from Beijing to New York travel middle lost-LE
xingli de] nuren xi bu xihuan zuo huoche?
luggage DE woman like not like sit train
‘Does that woman who lost her luggage on the flight from Beijing
to New York like to travel by train?’
d. Ruguo na-ge [RC zai cong Beijing dao NiuYue lutu zhong diu-le
if that-CL in from Beijing to New York travel middle lost-LE
xingli] de nuren xihuan zuo huoche, ta dagai jiu bu chang
luggage DE woman like sit train she probably just not often
zuo feiji.
sit plane
‘If that woman who lost her luggage on the flight from Beijing to
New York likes to travel by train, she probably flies infrequently.’
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