Search results for 'tag:Relative pronouns tag:Noun phrases' matching tags 'Relative pronouns' and 'Noun phrases'

Re: Two question about "where"

Goodman — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 23:35:54 GMT

Velimir wrote:
Hello everybody, I have two questions about the word "where" . 1.I've been told that "where" in the following sentence is a pronoun by its form : Where did you get to? And the explanation is that in possible answer like: I got to page 4. it stands for the noun phrase "page 4". If it is a pronoun in this sentence,is it because of the stranding of the preposition,or in any question beginning with "where" it is to be understood as a interrogative pronoun,not an adverb.(i.e "Where are you going" --> "I am going to London",would it be interpreted that "where" stands for the noun "London"). 2.When "where" is used as a subordinator to join two clauses like in the following sentence: a) Macy's is the place where I buy my clothes. what is "where" by its form in the subordinate clause "where I buy my clothes",a pronoun or an adverb? And if "the place" is left out like: b) Macy's is where I buy my clothes. does it change anything? Is "where" to be understood as a pronoun (and what noun it replaces then),conjunction,or an adverb. Many thanks Velimir

Hi Velimir,

One of the functions of where, when, who ,what and which is to form a question. i.e. Where have you been! In this usage, itâs an adverb for places and locations.

When did you call? â âWhenâ, like âwhichâ and âwhatâ is also an adverb, and it infers time.

Another function for these words is a conjunction which joints two separate concept or ideas together in a single sentence. i.e. âIt was eight in the evening when she came homeâ.

âI saw a man who looked to be at his late 20âs coming out of your house around 4 in the afternoon when I came home from school.â This sentence contained 2 relative pronouns :who and when.

This may help you.

http://grammar.uoregon.edu/pronouns/relative.html

Re: Noun clauses Vs adjective clauses

Hoa Thai — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 05:58:47 GMT

Anonymous wrote:

1. The news that he won surprised us all. (Noun clause?)
2. The news which we received last month was unbelievable.
3. It is a fact that the earth is round.
4. The fact that the earth is round is ~~weel~~ well-known.

Hi Sothy Sin,

#1 and #2 relative pronoun clauses are of adjectival type. They modify the noun in their own sentence.
You mentioned about appositives. Appositive is a noun or noun phrase that renames a nearby noun. For examples:

His first novel, The Blue Dream, will soon be published ....
His novel 'The Blue Dream' will soon be published ....

The Blue Dream is the appositive in both sentences.

#3 and #4 are appositive clauses.

EDIT: I forgot to answer your question regarding noun clauses, which perform a function of a noun. Below are a couple of examples:

That he looked at Ann made me angry. (subject)
I discovered what he had asked her. (direct object)

Re: Relative Clauses and Indirect Questions

CalifJim — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 04:42:55 GMT

"33.6 Though the relative and interrogative pronouns and adverbs beginning with wh are identical in form, it is possible in most cases to tell whether a clause is relative or interrogative. What is relative in 'I insist on paying what it has cost,' but interrogative in 'I insist on knowing what it has cost.'"

Either Jespersen wrote this in a moment of madness, or he possesses some clairvoyant power that leaves me in the dust. More on this later, but first:

I like Huddleston's term. He calls these what structures the fused relative constuction. Construction, not clause. And he's quite clear that he doesn't like the word clause for these.

Example:
I paid what it cost.
The paraphrase is
I paid that which it cost.

And only the underlined part is a (relative) clause. what it cost is the fused relative construction: it is itself a Noun Phrase (containing a sentence S) (in the sense given in Transformational Grammar) (I think this is what Clive is calling a noun clause, by the way), and it features the antecedent that fused to the relative pronoun which to form what (= that which).
________

As for the claim that it is usually possible to tell which of these are relative and which interrogative, even when the words that compose them are identical ( !!! ), I cannot agree. Of course, unlike Huddleston, Jespersen calls the whole structure -- including the what -- a relative clause (or an interrogative clause, depending on some ill-defined rules of context). So for Jespersen, one must appeal to semantics (and I'm supposing this means the verb) to disambiguate between 'relative' clauses of this type (fused relative constructions) and 'interrogative' clauses of this type. If it is the verb that makes the difference between the relative type and the interrogative type, then Jespersen thinks that the verb pay for takes a relative and know takes an interrogative.

Now note that all the examples given by the original poster have the verb show. What would Jespersen do here? Would he say that show takes a relative and say all examples are of relative clauses (i.e., Huddleston's fused relative construction)? Or would he say that show takes an interrogative and say all examples are of interrogative clauses?

Or -- and this gets very complicated -- would he say that he does not base his decision on the verb itself at all -- and so some of these are relative clauses and others are interrogatives? If so, what is the basis of such decisions? And how would he have decided?

I'm inclined to think that it is impossible to base the decision on anything syntactic, because the constituent words are identical. One can only make an arbitrary ruling on which verbs take relatives and which take interrogatives, and I wonder if there can be any really good reason for making such arbitrary rulings.

I'm inclined to say that all the original examples are fused relative constructions AND embedded interrogative clauses. (And that if there is some complicated way to disambiguate the two, it is probably not worth the trouble to try!)

CJ

Re: help using the word "which"

Mister Micawber — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 08:30:01 GMT

The only rule for these preposition + relative pronoun phrases of which I am aware is that they are reserved for formal contexts.

Re: Adjective and Adverb Appositives?

Inchoateknowledge — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 10:43:21 GMT

"I've come across the term "adjective appositive" and "adverb appositive" a few times, and I'm just wondering if this is widely-used. Is it an incorrect description of a construction that should be called something else? I'm asking this because I always see appositives defined as nouns (or noun phrases/clauses)."

They are not necessarily noun phrases.

they are phrases, clauses, either one or more words, and (further) explain or identify the noun (phrase) next to it

Here are a couple examples:

"The fire, yellow and orange, warmed the room." - adjective appositive Yes.

This page cached by Google calls this an adverb appositive: "The man shouted loudly, (which was) even frantically, to calm the crowd". Yes.

It explains, "Most appositive units can be considered nonrestrictive clauses with the relative pronoun and the verb deleted."

This is not true.

My sister who died in a car accident last week is... .the appositive here is a non-restrictive relative clause. It says I have now the same but one number of sisters.

My sister, who died... , restrictive rc, comma is needed. I used to have only one sister. The reative clause (parenthetical element) is set off by a set of commas.

I can see how an appositive can be seen as an elliptical nonrestrictive clause, but is there no other term for this usage of adjectives and adverbs?

Appositives are not always ellipted non restrictive clauses!

Perhaps you could even explain it as an elliptical participial phrase: "The fire, (being) yellow and orange, warmed the room." That doesn't work for the adverb appositive, though.

"(being) yellow and orange" may be interpreted as an ellipted participle phrase (adjectival) in appositive function.

So, what are your thoughts? What would you call this and how would you explain it?

appositives are modifiers.

Adjective and Adverb Appositives?

LearningNerd — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 04:31:09 GMT

I've come across the term "adjective appositive" and "adverb appositive" a few times, and I'm just wondering if this is widely-used. Is it an incorrect description of a construction that should be called something else? I'm asking this because I always see appositives defined as nouns (or noun phrases/clauses).

Here are a couple examples:

"The fire, yellow and orange, warmed the room." - adjective appositive

This page cached by Google calls this an adverb appositive: "The man shouted loudly, (which was) even frantically, to calm the crowd".

It explains, "Most appositive units can be considered nonrestrictive clauses with the relative pronoun and the verb deleted." I can see how an appositive can be seen as an elliptical nonrestrictive clause, but is there no other term for this usage of adjectives and adverbs? Perhaps you could even explain it as an elliptical participial phrase: "The fire, (being) yellow and orange, warmed the room." That doesn't work for the adverb appositive, though.

So, what are your thoughts? What would you call this and how would you explain it?

sentence analysis

Inchoateknowledge — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 08:04:02 GMT

The police questioned every person who lived in the neighbourhood.

The police questioned every person = coordinate clause.
'questioned' here is finite verb.
'The police' = subject
'every person' = object, and noun phrase
'every' = adjective (noun qualifier)
'who lived in the neighbourhood' = subordinate clause
'who' = relative pronoun
'lived' = finite verb,
'in the neighbourhood' = prepositional phrase
'the neighbourhood' = noun phrase
'neighbourhood' = noun,
How do we call the sentence element that answers the question: where?

My second question is: Do you agree with my statements?

Re: Use of modifier

paco2004 — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 02:43:15 GMT

Hello Zeyaraun

I don't think the insertion of commas is a good way. "A molecule with a distinct shape" as a whole is a complex noun phrase to mean a specific molecule. If you change it into "a molecule, with a distinct shape, ", the meaning would differ from that of the original phrase (To me "with a distinct shape" appears to be something like an adverbial").

It is true that we sometimes find it a bit difficult to identify the antecedent of a relative pronoun when the antecedent is a complex phrase containing multiple nouns. I think there is no good way to avoid such ambiguity. And I believe this sort of ambiguity can occur no matter whether the relative clause is restrictive or non-restrictive.

paco

Re: Subject and Verb

MrPedantic — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 22:17:31 GMT

1. Datagram: package of information containing the origin and destination addresses which is transferred on a network. (What is 'which' referring to here? Is it 'information' or 'package'? How do you know?)

"Which" here refers to "package of information..."

"Which" could refer to information; but it's unusual for a relative pronoun to refer back to a subsidiary constituent of a noun phrase where another clause intervenes.

MrP

Re: Everything happened

katsudon — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 04:51:24 GMT

Thanks Katsudon!
Is it also possible when a relative pronoun is followed by a noun phrase?

For instance,
"That is my brother John you think used to go out with your sister Mary."

Katsu: Yes, I think it may well be dropped in casual speech, Infinity. But one thing to remember is that in fast speech it may appear to have been dropped when in fact it wasn't. Some words in fast speech are unvoiced or close to unvoiced.

Remember also, that casual speech uses contractions, "That's my brother John ...". Remember too, that this is not a standard feature of English, which means that it doesn't happen all that often, as Jim noted.

I recommend to beginners that, in order to become accustomed to relative pronouns they don't actively seek to drop any of them. But it's vitally important to note, they should be aware of all styles and possibilities of English.

There are two important aspects to language, the active components, ie. the speech we use daily to communicate. These represent a relatively small part of language. The other part, which is vastly bigger, is our passive component. ESLs should endeavor to build up their passive component.

-------------------------

Or
She is the best thing happened to me.

I am more interested in a descriptive approach of grammar, and how native English speakers decides on which cases it can be omitted.

Katsu: Yes, it could be dropped in this case in fast, casual speech. The 'rule' Jim mentioned is quite a strong feature of our language, Infinity. Object form relative pronouns are often dropped; there is a strong resistance within our innate grammars to avoid dropping subject position relative pronouns.

Perhaps it's more that we know intuitively when dropping one will alter the meaning of the sentence. WRT the example in this thread, the meaning would be compromised and so ENLs would studiously avoid dropping the relative.