I was wondering whether Japanese distinguishes restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses in some way, either structurally or prosodically.
English, for example, marks the distinction prosodically by inserting pauses for non-restrictive relatives, also indicated in writing by commas (a more thorough explanation can be found in this Wikipedia article). For example,
(1) The builder, who erects very fine houses, will make a large profit. (non-restrictive)
(2) The builder who erects very fine houses will make a large profit. (restrictive)
have different intonations and different interpretations: For (1) it is known already which builder we're talking about and the relative simply states additional information, while in (2) the relative clause specifies which builder makes a large profit.
For Japanese I have never heard of a similar phenomenon - but also no statements about its non-existence. Only for relative copula clauses, one answer on this site mentions that である and の tend to be used more frequently with one type or the other. ([...] I also feel that である tends to be used more in nonrestrictive relative clauses, whereas の tends to be used more in restrictive relative clauses).
Are there any other such structural tendencies?
For testing for prosodic differences, one can imagine a scenario where some person has a mother and an older brother, who live in Osaka, while another brother lives somewhere else. In a situation where onw of the relatives living in Osaka wants to move, they might say something like (3) or (4):
(3) 大阪に住んでる母が東京に引っ越したいと言ってる (non-restrictive)
(4) 大阪に住んでる兄が東京に引っ越したいと言ってる (restrictive)
Would these two sentences be pronounced differently?