Traditional syntactic or semantic theories failed to provide a satistactory explanation for the unique features of non-restrictive relational clauses in people＇s daily use of English language. This paper would adopt ...Traditional syntactic or semantic theories failed to provide a satistactory explanation for the unique features of non-restrictive relational clauses in people＇s daily use of English language. This paper would adopt the theoretical framework of pragmatics and use relevance theory as well as face theory to discuss the unique pragmatic functions of non-restrictive relational clauses in English news report discourse. The three major pragmatic functions are： （1） optimizing the relevance of information; （2） seeking for the consistence with readers; and （3） avoiding imposing the author＇s opinion on readers.展开更多
文摘Traditional syntactic or semantic theories failed to provide a satistactory explanation for the unique features of non-restrictive relational clauses in people＇s daily use of English language. This paper would adopt the theoretical framework of pragmatics and use relevance theory as well as face theory to discuss the unique pragmatic functions of non-restrictive relational clauses in English news report discourse. The three major pragmatic functions are： （1） optimizing the relevance of information; （2） seeking for the consistence with readers; and （3） avoiding imposing the author＇s opinion on readers.
