Non-restrictive Relatives and Other Non-syntagmatic Relations in an LF Framework

Non-syntagmatic relations involve a loose linking of two or more items in a linear sequence which does not constitute a single grammatical construction. The units do not form any larger syntactic unit, and are related only by linear adjacency, not by hierarchical construction. I argue in this paper that non-restrictive relative clauses belong to the class of non-syntagmatic relations. Previous attempts to provide a structure-based account of non-syntagmatic relations have in general been unsatisfactory. A solution within the current LFG framework is for the appositional item and its "host" to retain separate c-structures and f-structures (and i-structures, if we adopt Tracy King's 1997 proposal), and to be linked only via cross-indexing at a discourse-level representation.