Relative Connectives in Present-Day English: A Corpus-Based Analysis

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to analyse the most important aspects which determine the selection of relative connectives in present-day English. The data have been extracted from the 180 relative clauses contained in three files of the Lancaster Parsed Corpus, which is a subset of the LancasterOslo/Bergen Corpus. The first of these files has material extracted from the press, the second one corresponds to scientific English and the third one contains clauses extracted from narrative texts. The three files total 27004 words. Grillllmatical factors, such as the function of the relative pronoun or the type of the noun phrase antecedent, have been found to influence the choice of the relative linkword. Some cognitive strategies which are aimed at making the production and understanding of relative clauses easier also condition the selection of the connective. Finally, the stylistic characteristics of the three genres analysed have also been proved to have an effect over the disuibution of the relative pronouns.