Search results for 'tag:Whom tag:Adjuncts' matching tags 'Whom' and 'Adjuncts'

Re: Is it a subject relative?

miriam — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 05:02:36 GMT

Hello.

Relative clauses can only be (from a syntactic point of view) either post-modifiers of nouns/pronouns, or sentence modifiers. They are never objects; they don't modify verbs.

What can be subjects or objects, WITHIN the relative clauses themselves, are the relative pronouns used (who, that, which, etc.).

You provided the following examples: "The girl laughed at the boy who is bigger than her" and "The boy hit the girl who slept".

Both sentences could use some changes, but I will concentrate on what you're asking only.

In the first sentence, "who is bigger than her" is a restrictive relative clause acting as post-modifier of the noun "boy". The relative pronoun "who" is the subject of the relative clause.

Your second sentence is another example of the relative pronoun as subject of the relative clause. The clause is "who slept", with "who" as its subject.

Here are a couple of examples of relative clauses in which the relative pronoun acts as object:

1. "Where is the flower-pot (that I gave you last month)?" [that = direct object] (the subject of the clause is "I")

2. "The books (that are on the table) are Paul's." [that = subject (the books)]

3. "You don't know the man (to whom my sister sold her car)." [to whom = indirect object] (the subject of the clause is "my sister")

There are also cases in which the relative pronoun is preceded by a preposition but you're not in the presence of an indirect object. In such cases, what you'll have is an adjunct (or adverbial), as in the following sentence:

4. "Chemistry is a subject which I've always had problems with." [here, "with which" is neither subject nor object, but an adjunct/adverbial]

You can remove "which" (though not the preposition) from sentence #4, and the sentence will still make sense: "Chemistry is a subject I've always had problems with".

One good way of telling whether the relative pronoun is acting as object (direct or indirect) or subject in the relative clause is trying to remove the pronoun in question from the clause. If you do, and the sentence still makes sense, that will most probably mean that the relative pronoun is the object of the clause (watch out for adjuncts, though). If you can't remove the pronoun, that will mean it's the subject (of the relative clause). Have a look at my examples and give this a try. You won't have a correct sentence in #2 if you remove the relative proboun, but you can certainly remove it in the other three examples. You'll have to make a minor change in sentence #3, though.

See if you can do it and what you come up with.

I hope this helps.

Miriam.

Re: To whom/whom

paco2004 — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 05:04:22 GMT

Hello Casi

Thank you for the detailed explanation. I think I got finally what you are saying. Please let me try to rephrase with my words what you are saying and please check if it is right.

She [gave] [John^the book] Format: S (give) (X^Y) :
X^Y is the object of the verb 'gave' and the phrase 'gave X^Y' means to 'realize X's ownership of Y'. Here the sign signifies something like a possessive apostrophe (that is, X^Y ~ X's Y). As we can say 'his book', (him^the book) is a possible phrase for X^Y. But like we cannot say 'John's it' or 'his it', it is impossible to make such a phrase (John^it) for X^Y. Therefore, we cannot say "She gave John it" or "She gave him^it". Further more it is assumed that X and Y in (X^Y) are so tightly connected and so X^Y behave almost as an inseparable single constituent. It means that X and Y in X^Y can't move independently in a sentence. We can imagine a sentence "She gave whom^the book" but this "whom" cannot singly move to the head of the sentence. Therefore, it's impossible to construct an wh-question sentence like "Whom did she give the book?"

She [(gave) (the book)] [to John ] Format: S (give Y) (to X)=S (move Y)(to X)
In this sentence the phrase [to X] works as the adjunct of the action of (move Y). Here X and Y are perfectly independent constituents and X, Y can be replaced by pronouns without constraints, though X is usually an animate thing. "She gave it to him" is one of the sentences of this construct. Also "whom" can work as X and from "She gave the book to whom", one can easily make either "To whom did she give the book?" or "Whom did she give the book to?" by adopting the principles of wh-word raising.

My understanding is right?

paco

[PS] By the way is it true we can never say "his it"?

Re: To whom/whom

paco2004 — Sun, 16 Jan 2005 20:10:42 GMT

Casi

To tell the truth I don't know much about linguistic. I merely read some online handouts about generative grammar by Upenn's Beatrice Santorini. I read them just because I thought they would help me to deepen the understanding why English grammar is as it is. Maybe you know Japanese and English are truly foreign each other in grammar, and so we Japanese (or at least me) find it difficult to understand the basic rules underlying English grammar. I feel the more foreign their L1 to English, the more English learners tend to get stuck to the mud of grammar. It may be one of the reasons why we Japanese are so bad in speaking skills despite the fact they relatively well know about English. Anyway what I would like to say is I'm merely an amateur linguist and therefore don't know much about the basic concepts implied by technical terms.

With "give", the thematic roles are: Theme (pen) and Goal (me), whereas with "donate", there's a Recipient role instead of Goal: Theme (money) and Recipient (church).

I understood your explanation that verbs like "give", "teach" and "write" can be "IO" incorporators. I feel any English sentence consists of SVO and the ditransitive structures of those verbs are SV[O[(IO)(DO)]] (IO and DO are in something like a nexus relation) and in the monotransitve structures of the verbs are SV[O=DO] and "to IO" is nothing but an adjunct (that is, no-essential need). But I can't understand why "donate" cannot take the ditransitive structure. Do you feel any essential difference between in the action of "give" in "I gave money to my brother" and that of "donate" in "I donated money to the church"? Anyway I'm still puzzled at how you native speakers have acquired the distinction between "ditansitivable" verbs and obligatorily monotransitive verbs.

paco