ABSTRACT
Violations of the Complex noun phrases (NP) constraint are occasionally reported in the literature. Setting aside arguably spurious cases in some languages there appear to be some genuine violations. Such violations are apparently possible under rather stringent conditions: the head of the relative clause must be indefinite and nonspecific; the verb of which the head is an argument must be an existential verb, or a verb like 'know', 'see', 'meet', 'look for', 'have', etc.; and the position relativized in the relative clause from which a constituent is extracted must be the subject. Relative clauses relativizing an oblique argument can also be extraposed. Although it is generally assumed that English disallows extractions from CNPs entirely, one finds that similar examples are acceptable. The additional fact that extraction is available only in the presence of indefinite nonspecific relative clause heads may possibly be understood in terms of the absence of a DP initial demonstrative/operator that would independently block the extraction.
