X-bar Theory(40) NP
NP RelS
NP RelS which I didn’t read
N' which I told you about
N
book
Again, we could keep adding NPs and relative clauses indefinitely, each relative clause
adjoined to a successively higher NP. Incidentally, note that here we see that adjuncts
may appear on different sides of the element that they modify. While an AP adjunct
precedes the N', the relative clause follows the P.
1.5.3 Adjunction to head
Finally, we will consider the case of adjunction to a head, using compound nouns for
an example. There are a number of complexities which we will not go into here,
sticking to more straightforward cases. Compound nouns are formed by putting two
otherwise independent elements, usually an adjective and a noun or two nouns,
together and use the resulting unit as a single noun:
(41) a armchair
b breastplate
c luncheon meat
d blackbird
e tallboy
Sometimes the spelling indicates that the two parts of the noun are put together to
form one word, but other times it does not. We will not delve into the mysteries of
English spelling here. Note that when compounds are formed from an adjective and a
noun, the noun is second. Moreover, if there is a main semantic element of the two
parts of the compound, this is also the second element: an armchair is a kind of chair
not a kind of arm. We might claim therefore that the second element is the head and
the first is a modifier of the head. The structures we get are:
(42) N N
N N A N
arm chair tall boy
Given that the second noun is the head, it follows that the first element is an
adjunct to the head. In principle, we should be able to get multiple head adjuncts by
the same recursive process as we have noted with other adjuncts. However in practice
it is not so common to find multiple compound nouns of this type. It is more common