Chapter 3 - Basic Concepts of Syntactic Theory(36) NP
spec N'
AP N'
popular AP N'
smart N
student
This could go on indefinitely with each adjunct introducing an N' which itself
contains an adjunct and another N' and hence any number of adjuncts could be added
to the structure, which appears to be the correct treatment of adjuncts.
1.5.2 Adjunction to phrase
We can exemplify adjunction to a phrase with a certain type of relative clause.
Relative clauses are clauses which are used to modify nouns:
(37) a the queen, [who was Henry VIII’s daughter]
b the sun, [which is 93 million miles from the earth]
c my mother, [who was a successful racing driver]
These clauses are not complements of the nouns, the nouns in (37) all being
intransitive, and cannot be specifiers as they follow the head. Like AP adjuncts, they
are recursive, demonstrating a clear property of an adjunct:
(38) book, [which I was telling you about], [which I haven’t read]
We will see in a later chapter that there is reason to believe that these types of
relative clause are adjoined to the NP rather than the N':
(39) NP
NP RelS
N' which I told you about
N
book
In this case it is the NP that is recursive, the top NP node contains the relative
clause and another NP. This means that there is room for further relative clauses: