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mamulka
Joined: 28 Jan 2007
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 Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 9:06 pm Post subject: GRAMMAR HELP PLEASE!!! quick question |
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was wondering we can't say this
you should find out which the best department is
IS should be after which,
but we can use IS after WHO, WHERE, etc.
not sure the rule that precludes the verb from going after the subject.
i assume it's a question word/word order rule but i couldn't find it. thanks,
matt |
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albazalba
Joined: 27 Dec 2006
Location: Hongdae
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| Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 9:10 pm Post subject: |
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I gotta say that sentence sounds wrong to me.
I would say:
You should find out which department is the best. |
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mamulka
Joined: 28 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 10:07 pm Post subject: |
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| yeah that would work and sounds the best, but it's doesn't help the students much to say 'it sounds wrong'. thanks for your help though. |
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cubanlord
Joined: 08 Jul 2005
Location: In Japan!
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| Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 10:28 pm Post subject: Re: GRAMMAR HELP PLEASE!!! quick question |
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| mamulka wrote: |
was wondering we can't say this
you should find out which the best department is
IS should be after which,
but we can use IS after WHO, WHERE, etc.
not sure the rule that precludes the verb from going after the subject.
i assume it's a question word/word order rule but i couldn't find it. thanks,
matt |
I'll give it a crack, though, I am far from an expert in syntax.
"is" is required as you are giving a state of being (the apartment being best in this case). "which" is working as the conjunction in this sentence. "The best apartment" is the condition and "is" serves as the conditional be verb. Anytime you have a conditional, the state of being comes before the actual condition.
Woland or gan ah jee (sorry I messed up your handle) should be good to answer this (I think Woland has his PH.D. in linguistics). |
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nobbyken
Joined: 07 Jun 2006
Location: Yongin ^^
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| Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 10:28 pm Post subject: |
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You could also say, " You should find out which is the best department."
All are correct.
The last 2 probably look better? |
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mamulka
Joined: 28 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 11:38 pm Post subject: |
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thanks for your help. i IM'd woland and am awaiting his answer. the which, that, what question words, relative pronouns confuse me sometimes. thanks for the links too!!!
matt |
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Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 1:15 am Post subject: |
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| mamulka wrote: |
was wondering we can't say this
you should find out which the best department is
IS should be after which,
but we can use IS after WHO, WHERE, etc.
not sure the rule that precludes the verb from going after the subject.
i assume it's a question word/word order rule but i couldn't find it. thanks,
matt |
Speak of the devil...:
We have four sentences under consideration here, as I follow from your PM, mamulka:
a) You should find out which the best physics department is
b) You should find out which is the best physics department
c) You should find out what the best physics department is
d) You should find out what is the best physics department
First, I have no doubt that all of these are produced by native speakers. In that sense, all of them can be produced. We might ask next, which are preferred or given social sanction as standard English. That gets more complicated.
Let's start with something easy here, the which/what distinction. We use 'what' when a choice is open. We use 'which' when the options for a choice have been restricted in some way in the discourse. Thus, we might ask someone, talking about likes and dislikes, "What's your favorite color? The choice is limited only by the set of possible colors and so is completely open within that set. But, when your girlfriend takes you clothes shopping and holds up three dresses in front of you for to choose from, she'd likely ask, "Which is your favorite color?, because the options had been restricted to the three in front of you.
Note that this is not a 'rule' that says that one form is correct and the other is not grammatically. Both can be grammatical; which one a person uses depends on their perception of whether choice is open or restricted in the discourse.
Thus, in the same situation, different speakers might use different forms and both be correct. Consider the original sentences here - does the speaker see the specification of 'physics' as restrictive or as establishing a larger, complete set to be chosen from? That perception will determine the choice here.
Now, the placement of 'is'. This is a trickier question, and I will admit that I'm long enough out of this kind of syntactic analysis that my final conclusions can be challenged. There are some basic points where I'm confident, though.
For simplicity's sake, I'm only going to consider 'which' forms here; I believe that everything I say about them will apply to the 'what' forms as well.
Both a) and b) are complex sentences involving the embedding of a subordinate clause into an independent clause. The independent clause is 'You should find out X', where X is the dependent clause, functioning as a direct object of the verb 'find out'. What this means is that the dependent clause, while a complete clause, is functioning as a noun phrase here. We know this is so because we can substitute a noun phrase for the clause and have a grammatical sentence (e.g., 'You should find out the answer').
Now let's turn to the structure of the embedded clause. The underlying embedded clause in both a) and b) is: 'the best department is X', where X represents some unknown noun phrase. X is represented in use by the interrogative pronoun 'which'.
In unembedded questions, interrogative pronouns are moved to the front of the sentence, while the subject and first element of the verb are inverted, producing, in this case, 'Which is the best department?'
However, when questions are embedded, inversion generally does not take place. Consider:
e) He found out what she was saying
f)*He found out what was she saying
In these examples, e) is grammatical, while f) is not. (Some people may produce f), I acknowledge, but this probably reflects a processing glitch and given the chance they would self-correct.)
This analysis would seem to suggest that of a) and b), a) is grammatically correct. I think that any prescriptive grammarian would likely take this position. In any formal writing, I would go with a).
UP TO HERE I AM COMPLETELY CONFIDENT. SPECULATION BEGINS HERE.
However, this does nothing to explain why b) is produced, and why many people find it equally acceptable as a), if not better.
Thing is, the rules on non-inversion in embedded clauses are not so strictly enforced in speech. Michael McCarthy has found that the non-inversion rule in reported speech (which involves embedding) is routinely violated by native speakers in speech (I'm not punctuating the following examples because I want you to consider them as speech, not writing):
g) She asked what he was saying
h) She asked what was he saying
Although the 'rules' call for g) as standard, people say h) frequently, effectively acting as if they were quoting, not reporting.
The best I can do in accounting for the presence of b) and people's comfort with it, is to suggest that the restriction against inversion in embedded clauses is not so strongly felt in sentences like this. My sense, too (and here I'm speculating), is that 'which' has something to do with this. I am personally more comfortable with b) than d), though I acknowledge that both are possible.
'which' is different from 'what' in two ways that may be relevant to this feeling. First, it is less common than 'what', and thus, from a connectionist perspective, learners have had fewer experiences with it to build up alternative patterns in knowledge with it. Second, 'which' (as an interrogative pronoun) probably most frequently occurs in sentences with inversion, and this pattern thus carries over into the less frequent embedded uses.
Sorry this is so long, and perhaps too technical. It's a complicated question. Interesting, but complicated. I do know that people with other, less functionalist perspectives, would offer different explanations of this last part. I also have to acknowledge here that I have no statistical data at hand to support my final speculations. But I think I'd put money on them. |
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mamulka
Joined: 28 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 5:05 am Post subject: |
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woland, thanks a million man. you really helped us out clarifying issue. to make your point, i was convinced your sentence b was better than a because A just sounded wrong to me and b is how i would say it even though it's probably less often used with 'which'.
incidentally, gavoris po ruskii? eto xorosho....ya zhil v ukrain god na zad.
spaceebo!
matt |
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