[Grammar] Integrated clauses that are not restrictive

[NAL123]

Under the heading: Integrated clauses that are not restrictive, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_relative_clauses gives the following examples:

a) The father who had planned my life to the point of my unsought arrival in Brighton took it for granted that in the last three weeks of his legal guardianship I would still act as he directed.
b) He sounded like the clergyman [that] he was.

My questions:

1) How do we know whether a relative clause is "integrated" or not? (It seems to be hard to identify these "integrated" clauses just by looking at them, because, they are, in fact, non restrictive clauses that only appears to be restrictive.)

2) Do we commonly use "integrated clauses" in English?

 

[jutfrank]

1) How do we know whether a relative clause is "integrated" or not? (It seems to be hard to identify these "integrated" clauses just by looking at them, because, they are, in fact, non restrictive clauses that only appears to be restrictive.)

Sufficiently competent users (here I include most native speakers) know by understanding the meaning of the utterance as a whole. The reason that you find this hard is because you're not a sufficiently competent user.

2) Do we commonly use "integrated clauses" in English?

If by 'commonly' you mean mean' frequently', the answer is no.

 

[jutfrank]

- 90% of speakers of BrE could not tell you what a relative clause wass;
- 95+% could not explain the difference between defining/restrictive and non-defining/non-restrictive clauses;
- 99+% could not tell what integrated or supplementary clauses were.

Agreed, but I'd put those figures considerably higher.

 

[jutfrank]

2) Do we commonly use "integrated clauses" in English?

If by 'commonly' you mean mean' frequently', the answer is no.

My answer here was a mistake. I misunderstood the question.

Correction: Yes, we frequently use integrated relative clauses but we do not frequently use non-restrictive integrated relative clauses.