話し言葉に特徴的な非制限的Which節の機能的・語用論的分析

抄録

This paper is concerned with nonrestrictive relative which-clauses that occur as unembedded dependent clauses, such as Which is a good thing. , Which reminds me..., etc. Although nonrestrictive which-clauses are generally regarded as more frequent in written English compared with speech, the unembedded type of which-clauses (henceforth, Which-clauses), literally independent of and separated from the preceding main clauses, are especially common in conversation and sometimes found in dialogue in fiction and very informal news texts (Biber et al. 1999). Biber et al. (1999) points out that unembedded dependent clauses are connected with the evolving nature of conversation and that Which-clauses are allowed because of the relative link that signals a close connection to the immediately preceding text. However, in order to clarify the whole picture of the occurrence of Which-clauses, further investigation is needed in terms of the general characteristics of spoken English on the one hand and the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties of Which-clauses themselves on the other. In the course of discussion, it becomes clear that the speaker’s real-time information processing during conversation, as well as certain functional and pragmatic properties of Which-clauses, is the key to finding out why they occur in informal English.