This study aims to re-examine the essential notion of “gap” in the studies of relative clauses. Following Creissels’ (Creissels, Denis. 2006. Syntaxe générale: une introduction typologique. Paris: Hermès; Creissels, Denis. 2019. Remarks on the typology of noun-modifying clause constructions. Paper presented at the Conference of Complex Sentences, Central China Normal University, 26–29 July) discussion, we argue that there are at least three types of gaps in terms of their respective compositions, namely the gap corresponding to a zero-marked constituent, the gap corresponding to a case-marked constituent, and the gap corresponding to an adposition-marked constituent. This classification, which is not based on the grammatical relation of the relativized constituent in the relative clause but focuses on the composition of the gap, can better explain the existence of the so-called “enlarged gap”, a special type of gap that has been almost completely ignored so far. Moreover, this marking-based approach can shed new light on Keenan and Comrie’s (Keenan, Edward & Bernard Comrie. 1977. Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 8(1). 63–99) Accessibility Hierarchy. In particular, we argue that some interplay of the syntactic position and the morphological marking of a syntactic object determines whether the constituent can be relativized.

中文翻译：

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“差距”很重要：对关系从句“差距”概念的反思

本研究旨在重新审视关系从句研究中“间隙”这一基本概念。继 Creissels 之后（Creissels，Denis。2006 年。Syntaxe générale：类型学介绍。巴黎：爱马仕；克雷塞尔斯、丹尼斯. 2019.关于名词修饰从句结构类型学的评论。在华中师范大学复杂句子会议上发表的论文，7 月 26-29 日）讨论中，我们认为就其各自的构成而言，至少存在三种类型的间隙，即与零标记成分相对应的间隙，间隙对应于大小写标记的成分，间隙对应于附加标记的成分。这种分类不是基于关系从句中相对化成分的语法关系，而是着眼于间隙的构成，可以更好地解释所谓“扩大间隙”这一特殊类型间隙的存在。到目前为止几乎完全被忽视。此外，这种基于标记的方法可以为 Keenan 和 Comrie 的研究提供新的思路（Keenan, Edward & Bernard Comrie。1977。名词短语可访问性和通用语法。语言探究8（1）。63–99) 可访问性层次结构。特别是，我们认为句法位置和句法对象的形态标记之间的某些相互作用决定了该成分是否可以相对化。