Catho/ic University of Leuven, Kortrijk, BelgiumzyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDC Lingua 54 (1981) 135-163 North-HolJand Publishing CompanyzyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA PSEUDO-MODIFIERS Renaat DECLERCK Received December 1980 This artiele draws attentio to the fact that in certain constructions relative or participial clauses are 'pseu o-modifiers', i.e. they have the superficial syntactic characteristics of modifying cl uses but 1ack the restrictive or nonrestrictive (appositive) meaning typical of such rela ive and participial clauses. Four typical cases of such pseudo-modifiers are pointed ut. It is further argued that pseudo-modifiers are derived from underlying noun clauses by a transformation ('Pseudo-Modifier Creation') which extracts an NP from an Sd inated by NP and sister-adjoins it to that S, so that the structure NP{NP SlNP (w ich is the superficial structure of an NP containing a modifying clause) is created. 1.zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA ). For a very long time lingui ts have agreed that there are two basic types of relative clauses in Englü~r: restrictive (defining) and nonrestrictive (nondefining, commenting, a~~ositive, descriptive) relative clauses. Non- restrictive relative clauses are gfnerally assumed to be formed via adjunction of an independent (or, possibl]-, a conjunct) S to a coreferential NP, as in (1) John is older than me 1& John is my friend => { JOhn, who is my friend, is older than me.} John, who is older t~an me, is my friend. There is less consensus as to the origin of restrictive relative clauses. On the surface the antecedent NP and the restrictive relative clause clearly constitute an NP node: NP[ P S]NP, but there is no agreement as to 0024-3841/81/0000-0000/$02.50 © [orth-Holland Publishing Company