the acquisition of relative clauses in relation to language typology

bernard comrie

noun phrase accessibility hierarchy (NPAH)
subject>direct object>other object>genitive/possessor

"...for native speakers of European languages learning japanese or korean as a second lanaguge (L2), the articles in this collection suggest surprisingly little transfer..."

"RCS in Japanese and Korean are so different structurally form their European translation equivalents...that learners simply treat them as a new strcture to be learned rather than as variants of any structure familar to them form their native language."

"Each position on the NPAH is justified empirically by the existence of at least one languge that relativizes on that position but on no lower position."