0805852212.pdf

Following are some additional examples that show the difference between
the two types of nonrestrictive modification:

62. Fritz enjoyed talking about his feelings,which drove Macarena crazy.(sen-
    tence modifier)


63. The Malibu house,which Buggsy used simply for relaxation,was damaged in
    the mud slide. (NP modifier)


64. Buggsy took up golf,which troubled his wife.(sentence modifier)


65. Mrs. DiMarco’s properties,which were extensive,provided her with a very
    comfortable living. (NP modifier)


66. China Club always had an attractive crowd,which appealed to Fritz.(sen-
    tence modifier)

We saw earlier that when complement clauses function as objects, English
allows deletion of the complementizer, as inShe knew that Fred was tired/She
knew Fred was tired.English also allows us to delete relative pronouns under
the same conditions, as the following sentences illustrate:

67. The dress that Macarena wanted was expensive.
    67a. The dress Macarena wanted was expensive.

The grammar of relative clauses requires a slight adjustment to our phrase-
structure rules. Note that we must make NP optional to describe the fact that
some relative clauses have a relative pronoun as the subject. RP, of course, sig-
nifies any relative pronoun:

SÆ

Sconj

comp

RP

(NP) VP

ì

í

ï

îï

ü

ý

ï

þï

Diagrams of a few of these sentences will illustrate the grammatical struc-
ture of sentences with relative clauses. The diagrams for nonrestrictive modifi-
ers are especially interesting because they show the difference between
sentence-level modification and NP modification:

PHRASE STRUCTURE GRAMMAR 147