ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the interpretive dimensions of the implicational universals of relative clauses through the initial acquisition characteristics of the relativization of simplex clauses by children. The refined NP accessibility hierarchy (NPAH) can explain not only the early acquisition characteristics of relative clauses in Chinese- and English-type-language children but also provide a theoretical explanation for the existence of NPAH. The chapter deals with the characteristics of Chinese children's initial acquisition of simplex relative clauses and compares them with those of English-learning children in order to explore the explanatory dimensions of the NP accessibility hierarchy. Children's acquisition characteristics of the simplex relative clauses are subject to the double constraints of syntactic computational complexity, the identifiability hierarchy, and the semantic relatedness principle and are the result of the combined effects of syntactic processing and functional computation. Acquisition characteristics can validate certain assumptions about the essential attributes of language and the rationality of linguistic analyses while setting higher goals for linguistic analyses.
