I’ve learned that relative clauses modify antecedents and heads of noun phrases in them.
ex) a nice car that is over there
that is over there modifies car, not a nice car
And then, how about these?
ex) Convenience store that you like
Does that you like modify store or convenience store or both are fine?
ex) English teacher that you like
Does that you like modify teacher or English teacher or both are fine?
What do you native English speakers think? Thank you so much as usual.
Comments
Integrated (defining) relative clauses modify nouns and nominals. In your example the antecedent is the nominal "nice car", but we generally talk of the relative clause as modifying just the head noun, in this case, "car".
Note that a nominal is the unit intermediate between the noun phrase and the noun, the head of the noun phrase. The nominal thus always excludes the determiner, if one is present.
It modifies "convenience store", or simply "store".