A Study on the Choice of Relative Clause

초록

The current study examined the choices of several relative clause (RC) forms; the degree to which these RC forms were considered more appropriate than another in some communicative situations; and linguistic and sociolinguistic factors contributed to the observed preference. The overall results suggest that while no gender differences were found, the choices of RC forms may be explained in terms of the following five factors: (1) the interplay between types of head nouns and those of relative pronouns; (2) informal registers, or the degree of formality; (3) lexical cohesion to keep a conversation coherent; (4) a simplicity principle, and finally (5) a politeness strategy.

키워드