26 According to Quirk et al. 1972, RCs are also called nonrestrictive or restrictive
modifiers of NPs. Because of that, RCs have correspondences to attributive ADJs, as shown in 13.c.
13.c 1. people who speak English 2. English-speaking people
c. Multiple Postmodification
Multiple postmodification exists in three conditions Quirk et al., 1985, p.1276:
a. More than one modification is applied to a single noun head. 14.a the man in the corner talking to John
The second modifier „talking to John‟ modifies the whole NP „the man in the
corner ‟.
b. A modification is applied to more than one noun head. 14.b 1. the man in the corner and the woman in the corner
2. the man and woman in the corner The modifier
„in the corner‟ modifies two noun heads, „the man‟ and „the woman
‟. c. The combination of the structure a and b.
14.c the man and the woman in the corner talking to John The syntactic structure of the NP is shown in Figure 2.5.
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Figure 2.5 Multiple Postmodification
The head of the modifying phrase can be further modified, such as: 14.d 1. the man in the corner
2. the corner nearest the door 3. the man in the corner nearest the door
As a result, the combination of structure a, b, and c will be: 14.e [the [man and woman] [in the corner [nearest the door]]] talking to
John]] The order of the NP modifiers relates to the meaning of the NP. Hence,
Quirk et al. 1985 suggest that “careful ordering of constituents in an NP is
essential to communicate one‟s intention” p. 1298. Different meanings are resulted in examples 14f.1-2 due to the order of the modifiers.
14.f 1. the man in black talking to the girl 2. the man talking to the girl in black
The first NP means that it is the man who is in black clothes, but the second
means that the girl wears black clothes. The of-phrase is preferred to the genitive, in order to avoid ambiguity Quirk et al., 1985, as shown in example 14.g.
14.g 1. the ears of the man in the deckchair 2.
the man‟s ears in the deckchair
