Job Discussion Forums

[jpvanderwerf2001]

Howdy, all.

I'm teaching a Cambridge exam course (CAE), and the following example came up:

Dian Fossey, born in San Francisco, was interested in animals from an early age.

I'm a bit confused. Why is "born in San Francisco" considered an adverbial clause (by the teacher's book)? I don't see its purpose as an adverb. Does the fact that there's no relative pronoun have something to do with it?

I'm probably just missing something. Could you help?

Thanks in advance.

[rusmeister]

It's not adverbial. It modifies the subject. It is a relative clause whose function is adjectival. The presence or absence of a relative pronoun is irrelevant to that. The fact that it is set off by commas means that it is not necessary to the sentence and can be safely removed with a construction crane.

Teacher's books are written by imperfect people.

Sometimes they are just semi-educated people with good connections to a publisher with a lush contract with (for example) a school district or state organization. (Of course there are good ones out there. But some, esp. American publications, are subject to this in my experience.)

In teaching ESL to upper-level students, I've sometimes been forced to do my own research when I found that nobody, not Murphy, not Evans, not Soars, etc etc could decently explain modal verbs, articles or the present perfect systematically on an advanced level without simply making up a bunch of arbitrary 'rules' to be memorized.
As a result, I now have my own cool explanations of theory which I just need to trademark and publish...

[jpvanderwerf2001]

Phew! Thank you. Thought I was going crazy or losing my grammar edge, know what I'm sayin??