The English relative clause

A computer grammar is described which includes most of the English relative-clause constructions. It is written in the form of a left-to-right phrase-structure grammar with discontinuous constituents and subscripts, which carry such syntactic restrictions as number and verb government category. The motivation for the hierarchy of syntactic choices and for the use of discontinuous constituents is discussed. Many examples are given, and special attention is given to complement constructions and to the relation of the relative pronoun to complex prenominal and postnominal determiner constructions. Written in COMIT, the program runs as part of a larger grammar of English.