How do relative clauses function within Spanish sentence structures
Relative clauses in Spanish function as subordinate clauses that provide additional information about a noun, known as the antecedent, within a sentence. They can be restrictive — specifying which noun is meant — or non-restrictive, adding extra information. Spanish relative clauses are introduced by relative pronouns such as “que,” “quien,” “cual,” and “cuyo,” which agree with the antecedent in gender and number.
Structurally, the relative clause is embedded within the main clause and typically follows the noun it modifies, making the sentence complex. Within Spanish, subject and object relative clauses show syntactic differences; subject relatives are generally easier to process than object relatives due to the syntactic intervention of subjects in the latter. Mood choice (indicative or subjunctive) within relative clauses reflects the speaker’s perception of the reality or existence of the antecedent—the subjunctive often indicates doubt or non-definiteness, while the indicative suggests reality or certainty.
Prosodic cues, such as breaks in speech, can influence how listeners interpret relative clauses, affecting attachment preferences in sentences with ambiguous structures. Lexico-semantic and syntactic information interact in real-time during the comprehension of Spanish relative clauses, influencing how these constructions are processed at various stages.
In summary, Spanish relative clauses serve to modify nouns within complex sentences, using specific relative pronouns, with syntactic, semantic, and prosodic factors playing key roles in their formation and comprehension. 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 11
References
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Searching High and Low: Prosodic Breaks Disambiguate Relative Clauses
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Advanced Sentence Structures: Compound and Complex Sentences and Relative Clauses
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Experimental Evidence on Island Effects in Spanish Relative Clauses
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Experimental Evidence on Island Effects in Spanish Relative Clauses
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On the gradience of island effects in Spanish relative clauses: experimental evidence
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«¡La de + N + que…!» The Feminine Definite Article in Spanish Exclamative Clauses
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Cortadora relative clauses: A comparative analysis between Spanish, Portuguese and French
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Spanish is not different: On the universality of minimal structure and locality principles
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Early and late preferences in relative clause attachment in Portuguese and Spanish
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The actress was not on the balcony: testing the Pseudorelative-First Hypothesis in Spanish
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Spatial prepositions for original (and richer) meanings: the case of Spanish