RELATIONSHIPS OF NON-EQUIVALENCE
Dependency in clause combinations
SENTENCE RELATIVE CLAUSES
The sentence relative is one type of supplementive clause. It has as its antecedent the whole first clause, or its complement. The relative pronoun is which. Which is what / why /where are also used, particularly in spoken English.
They decided not to go, which turned out to be a mistake.
We promised you the sun would shine, which it did. H
e’ll probably forget I ever mentioned it. Which suits me fine.
The sentence relative is characterized by certain features:
• It is only loosely connected to its antecedent clause. Although its subordinate status is signalled by the relativizer which, it is a parenthetical supplementive that has considerable semantic independence.
• Semantically, the sentence relative makes an independent statement, which is an extension of the already complete unit. It adds an evaluative comment or a justification to something that is already identified.
• Intonationally, the supplementive clause constitutes an independent intonation unit which is signalled by a comma or, more informally, by a dash.
• The discourse function of such clauses is to assert new information in the form of a comment without making it the main point of the utterance.
Sentence relative clauses have become versatile in English. It is now quite common to f ind them functioning as freestanding subordinate clauses after a pause. They may be uttered by the same speaker or added by the addressee as a collaborative response, usually of an evaluative nature:
A. Perhaps she thinks it sounds better. B. Which it does really. [KD8]
A. He goes out playing squash, then he’s not eating
his main meal until eleven o’clock at night. B. Which is stupid [KBC]
Many such clauses can be paraphrased by a coordinated clause (e.g. and it does; and it’s stupid.). The relativizer which in a supplementive clause marks the closeness of the comment to the previous discourse. Which is sometimes considered as a one-word substitute for the coordinated or the unlinked structure.
