Johanna,
While I agree that the clauses are noun complements, I think that term and "appositive" come from different schools of thought. Certainly appositives are typically optional, not licensed like these, but I'm not sure that appositive is as well defined a term as complement.
I'm not sure at all why anyone would analyze them as relatives, and I take some time in my UG grammar classes to make the distinction. I start with wh-questions to show wh-movement and therefore the notion of a structural gap. Then I go to wh-relatives and show the same gap. Wh-movement, or deletion with that-relatives, not to raise an old argument, is characteristic of relatives: they have a structural gap. Noun complement clauses don't. The distinction is consistent and provides a principled basis for distinguishing the two structures. I know that major traditional grammars, like Jespersen, Quirk et al., and Huddleston&Pullum also make the distinction, and generative grammar has made the distinction very carefully right from the beginning, especially in Rosenbaum's seminal work on English complement structures. Much of his analysis has been redone, especially the claim that clauses as objects are NPs, as several have argued here recently, but the complement/relative distinction has not been challenged.
Herb
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"His suspicion that she was unfaithful
His doubt that she would be there"
The 'that' clauses here are noun complements: they specify what the
suspicion and doubt are, respectively. Again, the existence of some kind
of suspicion or doubt is in the semantics of each derived nominal, just
as "eat" has a non-specfic "eatee" in its semantics.
They aren't appositives. I would not necessarily analyse them as
relative clauses, either, though some people (maybe even most) would.
This is just another function, like direct object. Again, various
constructions can be noun complements: "a book about Donald Trump", "the
history of Troy" have PP complements, for ex.
This explanation may be too advanced for the grammar novice, however.
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue * San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. (805)-756-2184 * Fax: (805)-756-6374 * Dept. Phone. 756-2596
* E-mail: [log in to unmask] * Home page:
http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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