next up previous contents
Next: Adjunct Clauses Up: Overgeneration Previous: Internal head constraint

Overt Comp constraint on stacked relatives

Stacked relatives of the kind in ((281)) are handled.
(280)0(280
(281)
[[the book [that Bill likes]] [which Mary wrote]] 

There is a constraint on stacked relatives: all but the relative clause closest to the head-NP must have either an overt Comp or an overt NPw. Thus ((282)) is ungrammatical.

(281)0(281
(282)
*[[the book [that Bill likes]] [Mary wrote]] 

Again, no good way of handling this constraint is known to us currently.


XTAG Project
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~xtag