The NP-S analysis of relative clauses and compositional semantics

Conclusions

We have sketched how it is possible to give an analysis for adjoined relative clauses which is consistent with the compositionality principle and have shown that the technique which seems necessary for this analysis can be used to provide a compositional semantics for the NP-S analysis of English relative clauses.

It is unlikely that anyone working within the framework of a compositional theory would choose the NP-S analysis for English, since it is clearly much less elegant and simple, in some intuitive sense, than the alternative Nom-S analysis. Our results seem to indicate, however, that such an analysis cannot be ruled out in principle, since any constraint on the theory that would exclude the NP-S analysis would seem to exclude the Hittite analysis as well. So the arguments for the Nom-S analysis in the English case must be based on other grounds, or the Hittite analysis is also incorrect and should be ruled out, or the happy discovery of some as yet unknown principles will allow one but not the other.