Search results for 'tag:Gerunds tag:Direct questions' matching tags 'Gerunds' and 'Direct questions'

Re: Relative Clauses and Indirect Questions

Cool Breeze — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 10:19:32 GMT

Clive wrote:
The bottom line, of course, is that any of these systems is OK as long as it provides a tool that someone finds useful in learning to speak good English.

Would you call this a relative clause? I don't know where the pen is. What would you say it relates to?

When I asked this, I thought you might reply that it relates to the term or idea of 'a location'. You surprised me by answering in my grammar the clause in bold is an indirect question, not a relative clause. I don't see it as any kind of question at all. Would you also see I know where the pen is as an indirect question? If not, then what would you call it and what would it relate to?

I learned a grammar that includes categorizing clauses as noun clauses, adverbial clauses and adjectival clauses. That seems helpful to me, because it allows me to say things like this. In the sentence Mary likes cake, you can replace 'cake' by another noun, by a gerund or by a noun clause. In other words, you can use a noun-equivalent as the object. If I just talk about relative clauses, I can't say this so simply, because some kinds of relative clauses can fit as objects and others can't. eg I can't say Mary likes which is chocolate-flavoured. So, I assume that there is some way to differentiate between types of relative clauses in that style of grammar?

Hi Clive

I trust you have returned home with a refreshed mind and full of eagerness to get back to "work" on EnglishForums. I agree with you 110 percent: grammar and grammatical terminology and definitions are just a tool, and if a tool works for a person, the tool is good enough for him. I am actually not particularly interested in academic grammatical nuances. I'm very pragmatic in my attitude to grammar.

With regard to I don't know where the pen is: yes, of course where indicates a location, but that is self-evident to me and I wasn't taught to analyze language using such terms. And indeed, I was taught to consider where the pen is an indirect question even in a sentence like I know where the pen is. Of course no one is asking anything in the sentence; the term "indirect question" is just grammatical and stems from the word order. The point for me (ages ago) was to learn not to say I know where is the pen, and thus I arrived at the correct word order even though the term "indirect question" made me wonder about the logic of grammar in those early days.

I'm sure there are other terms that describe the clause with better logic but I don't want to adopt new terms for it. That might cause linguistic confusion in my head because everything relates to everything in language - or languages - and English grammar isn't the only grammar I deal with. At the moment, I think, I have everything sufficiently correctly pigeonholed in the area of my brain reserved for grammar.

I think I'll get a headache if I dig deeper into noun clauses, adverbial clauses and whatever you mention in your post because I am not used to these terms at all. I'm sure they are helpful and good but I have never used them.

I sometimes mention grammarians by name in my posts as I realize that I occasionally use terms which may be unfamiliar to some readers. This is just to stop people thinking I have made up these terms myself.

Cheers
CB

Re: Relative Clauses and Indirect Questions

Clive — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 01:36:11 GMT

Hi CB,

I share many of the basic opinions you have expressed.

I, too, learned my grammar as a schoolboy. I think that in many ways, we spend the rest of our lives as 'prisoners' of what we originally learned.

As you do, and although I teach English for a living, I often see grammatical terminology and grammar rules on this Forum that I have not encountered before and often that I do not understand. Sometimes I explore them on the internet, while other times I just try to figure out what people are talking about. In my opinion, a lot of English learners have a much better theoretical knowledge of English than do native speakers. I sometimes find that in my classroom, too.

This encountering of new ideas and points of view is one of the reasons I enjoy participating in the Forum.

The bottom line, of course, is that any of these systems is OK as long as it provides a tool that someone finds useful in learning to speak good English.

Would you call this a relative clause? I don't know where the pen is. What would you say it relates to?

When I asked this, I thought you might reply that it relates to the term or idea of 'a location'. You surprised me by answering in my grammar the clause in bold is an indirect question, not a relative clause. I don't see it as any kind of question at all. Would you also see I know where the pen is as an indirect question? If not, then what would you call it and what would it relate to?

I learned a grammar that includes categorizing clauses as noun clauses, adverbial clauses and adjectival clauses. That seems helpful to me, because it allows me to say things like this. In the sentence Mary likes cake, you can replace 'cake' by another noun, by a gerund or by a noun clause. In other words, you can use a noun-equivalent as the object. If I just talk about relative clauses, I can't say this so simply, because some kinds of relative clauses can fit as objects and others can't. eg I can't say Mary likes which is chocolate-flavoured. So, I assume that there is some way to differentiate between types of relative clauses in that style of grammar?

What do you think?

I will be away for the next 5 days, so it may take some time for me to reply to you again.

Best wishes, Clive

Re: Relative Clauses and Indirect Questions

Cool Breeze — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 14:41:56 GMT

Clive wrote:
Would you call this a relative clause? I don't know where the pen is. What would you say it relates to?

Hi Clive

I learned my grammatical terminology as a schoolboy and as far as I can remember most of the terms I learned were applicable to all the languages I studied. There were/are exceptions, of course. There is no gerund in Finnish and Swedish, for example. Maybe the writers of grammar books deliberately wanted to make grammar easier for us that way.

As I read EnglishForums I frequently see grammatical terms I have never seen anywhere, and I don't have a clue as to what they really mean even though I think I know English grammar reasonably well. I am not saying my terms are better or more correct than the ones I don't know and use. Differences in terminology may result in misunderstandings, though. I suppose there's nothing we can do about that.

As for your sentence, in my grammar the clause in bold is an indirect question, not a relative clause. Where isn't a relative pronoun in my English, what is. By the way, the Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary agrees with me on defining what as a relative pronoun in some contexts:

"8. (used relatively to indicate that which): I will send what was promised."

Cheers
CB