A Comparative Study of Noun Phrases in East Asian Languages

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This study argues that Chinese makes use of adjunction to NP, as well as Kaynean (1994) head-raising, in order to form relative clauses. This proposal is based on the hitherto unobserved phenomena that Chinese relative clauses can trigger NP-ellipsis when they precede a numeral quantifier (NQ), but they cannot when they follow an NQ, which is the case for at least some native speakers of (Mandarin) Chinese. By way of contrast, the study also shows that Kaynean head-raising is not allowed in Japanese, contrary to Takahashi (2011), who claims that Japanese permits Kaynean head-raising in relative clause formation. The study concludes that nominal architecture is not uniform across head-final languages, thereby supporting Saito, Lin, and Murasugi (2008).