Noun Phrase Accessibility Revisited
Bernard Comrie, Edward Louis Keenan · Language · 1979
In the light of recent research on Noun Phrase Accessibility (NPA) and relative clause formation (cf. Keenan & Comrie 1977), the main principles of NPA are here clarified and modified. The proposals of Maxwell 1979 for revising the criteria which distinguish relative clause formation strategies, and for stating further generalizations in terms of the strategies thus defined, are considered in detail. It is concluded that Maxwell advances the understanding of NPA by providing further significant generalizations, but that his criteria sometimes lack explicitness, and do not affect the validity of the criteria originally established for distinguishing strategies in the statement of NPA.