ABSTRACT
One of the challenges in reading complex texts, such as scholarly texts, is to find the relationship between the modifier and modified. Because one single sentence often embeds multiple modified parts within the sentence, identifying the coherent unit of the modifier and the modified is essential for reading the text accurately. In this chapter, the authors discuss some key points of identifying the modifying–modified relationships of sentences, especially placing emphasis on noun-modifying sentences. In general, a modified noun is grammatically related to the predicate of the preceding modifying sentence. One of the reasons why it is difficult to identify the relationships between noun-modifying sentences and head nouns is that, unlike English, there are no relative pronouns such as ‘who,’‘whom,’ ‘which,’ or ‘that’ in Japanese.
