Teacher Discussion Forums

Wow, I am doing my homework in Applied Linguistics and I never thought it would be so confusing Relative, Complement, and Adverbial clauses and trying to figure out where the subordinate clause starts and stops.

I don't know if I am doing this write so If you have a second, please go over this with me. I would really appreciate it, as I am doing this course online and my classmates have been less than friendly and helpful.

1. The Holiday Inn is on the edge of town, [near the airport].
Adverbial clause - location

2. I want to buy a walkman [to keep me from falling asleep during the long bus rides].
Adverbial clause - reason

3. Jim sees his buddies [who are standing in line waiting to collect their unemployment checks].
Relative clause - describes buddies

4. Because HMV with the best music in the area is situated near the main intersection [many people go their every day].
Completemt or Relative and how do I tell the differece??

Very trickly stuff for me. Hope you can help. Also, any good websites that explain this stuff nice and simple would be appreciated.

Cheers, The Bear.

I don't want to say too much because I am not up with grammatical terminology in English, and I may confuse the issue further, but:

It is my impression that:

a clause has to contain an implicit or explicit finite verb.

every sentence has a principal clause, and may have either a complementary clause or various sorts of subordinate clause, or combinations of the two attached.

a complementary clause is equivalent in rank to the principal clause and is introduced by words like 'and', 'or', 'but'.

a subordinate or dependent clause qualifies the principal clause in some way: if it elaborates on a word in the PC it is a relative clause of some sort; if it elaborates on the PC as a whole it is an adverbial clause of time, reason, place or whatever.

Soooooo:

1. .... 'near the airport' contains an implicit finite verb (it is near the airport) and the implied conjunction 'and'. It is therefore a complementary clause.

2. ..... 'to keep me from falling asleep' contains the implicit finite verb 'keep', and it qualifies the whole PC. It is therefore an adverbial clause of reason (?) or intent/purpose (?).

3. .... buddies, 'who are standing in line ....' elaborates on a word in the PC, and contains the explicit finite word 'are'. It is therefore a relative clause.

4. 'Because .........................' qualifies the whole PC and is therefore an adverbial clause of reason (being introduced by 'because')

Between you and me I wouldn't have called 'near the town' a clause at all but an 'adverbial phrase of place' - but there appears to be some justification for the analysis I've given.

Cross my fingers that this helps.[/b]

Thanks so much. It is amazing that when you ask people for their explaination, it seems more reasonable and down to earth than some of the authors of these books.

So in number 1 - The Holiday Inn is on the edge of town, near the airport.

Isn't "near the airport" the subordinate clause? It can't stand alone by itself and is dependent on the main clause.

Tricky, especially in really long sentences where you have subordinate clause inside a superordinate inside a subordinate that is part of the overall superordinate clause.

Really appreciate your assistance.

I could also use your help in Transformational Rules. I am making the thread now.

Again, thanks.

Well, thanks for the compliment. I'm afraid I'm only second-guessing the answers on the basis of what the exercise seems to be telling me.

No. 1 grafts two clauses of equal status together:

The Holiday Inn is on the edge of town
The Holiday Inn is near the airport

Since one clause is not dependent on/subordinate to the other in any way they can only be joined by 'and', 'or' and similar 'balancing' conjunctions:

The HI is on the edge of town and the HI is near the airport.

But this is uneconomical, so we use the shorthand devices of a pronoun, an implied verb and a brief pause in speech, indicated in writing by a comma, to imply the conjunction 'and'. The intonation pattern we choose will also support this analysis.

I can't help you with T-Rules I'm afraid. I did some work on this once upon a time but it is all a very distant memory.

Dear Jackie,
1 and 2 are adverbial phrases. Clauses need a subject and a verb.

3 is, as you said correctly a relative clause

4 is a main clause; the subordinate clause is the one that starts with "Because".

I was inclined to agree with you, Stephen, in an earlier post, but then I used the old trick of employing the information given in the exercise in order to answer it. It then became apparent that Sentence 1 can, indeed, be seen as conjoined principal clauses, and sentence 2 as having a dependent clause of reason, because why would sentences 1 and 2, if they were to be analyzed as "clause + phrase", be included?

Harzer[/b]

why would sentences 1 and 2, if they were to be analyzed as "clause + phrase", be included?

Possibly because the book or course you are using is a load of crap?

Hi Stephen!

Are you sure you are reading my posts, or are you just reading things into them?

I said on various occasions that I do not feel competent to answer the original question on the basis of what must be by now (30 years after I indulged in grammar theory) an outdated form of grammatical analysis (although it is evidently the one you are using). So I am not referring to any text or course, but rather using the problem set as my sole guide to the sort of analysis that is currently in vogue.

On the assumption that the person setting the problem is not an idiot, and that he/she has chosen a range of sentences that allows the different forms of clause he/she wants identified to be in fact identified, I have produced what I consider a reasonable analysis of sentences 1 and 2, in which the apparent phrases turn out, on closer inspection, to be, as we say in German, 'verkappte' clauses.

Now, if you want tobe taken seriously, what about attacking my analysis rather than my person.

Harzer

Hi Harzer,

Here's an old saying, I think it's some buddhist thought or something. It's about presents.... and insults, (or anything else negative)

It goes something like this

"If someone offers you a present and you don't accept it .... to whom does the present belong?"

Anyway, I'm sure Stephen wasn't attacking you.... and , if you're lucky enough to live in Oz....why worry?!? What a fantastic place.

mfG usw

Will

http://www.wordsurfing.co.uk

Dear Harzer,
I wasn't attacking you, I was attacking a course or course book that could give the results the original poster came up with.

A clause needs a subject and verb; it did thirty years ago, does now, and will in thirty years time. The First two sentences are not "clause + phrase" but "clause including various phrases only one of which concerns us at the moment".

Your analysis will work for 1., though it doesn't seem a particularly useful way of looking at things, but certainly won't for 2. (the phrase is incidentally an adverbial phrase of purpose not of reason.

There are only two coclusions we can come to here. Either the exercises were rubbish or jackebear has completely misunderstood them.

Well, you have set my mind at rest about your intentions.

We still have to find common ground in the interpretation of Sentence 2 so as to satisfy the demands of the original question:

I want to buy a walkman to keep me from falling asleep during the long bus rides

I want to buy a walkman
=> because it will keep me from ............
=> which will keep me from .............
=> so that it will keep me from ............

Which of these do you prefer as the clause underlying the second part of this sentence?

How do you categorise this type of clause?

I don't think jackebear is anything but mystified by this grammatical approach. The question she is required to answer must have been given us verbatim.

Harzer

Dear Will!

As it so happens, I am not at the moment in wonderful Australia but in glorious Thailand, in a town on the coast five hours south of Bangkok, where I am pretty much the only foreigner.

Your 'buddhist thought' recalled to me an incident that happened here several days ago.

I had walked over to 'monkey mountain', the preserve of a large tribe of wild monkeys just outside town. A girl was there selling peanuts at 10 baht a bag so that the visitor could feed the monkeys. I gave her 20 baht, but indicated that she should feed the monkeys on my behalf. I then turned and made to walk away. This clearly posed for her a dilemma of Socratic proportions. Should she refuse my money, since I was getting nothing in return? Should she pocket the money as a windfall? Should she feed the monkeys one bag of peanuts and pocket 10 baht? Should she carry out my instructions to the letter?

I did in fact sneak a look to see what solution she arrived at, and I am sure it was the third one. And it was surely the wisest, as perhaps Socrates and Buddha and Adam Smith would have agreed, for it gave the greatest return to the greatest number: my intention was in part satisfied;
the monkeys benefited; the girl derived exra profit.

Harzer

Dear Will!

As it so happens, I am not at the moment in wonderful Australia but in glorious Thailand, in a town on the coast five hours south of Bangkok, where I am pretty much the only foreigner.

Your 'buddhist thought' recalled to me an incident that happened here several days ago.

I had walked over to 'monkey mountain', the preserve of a large tribe of wild monkeys just outside town. A girl was there selling peanuts at 10 baht a bag so that the visitor could feed the monkeys. I gave her 20 baht, but indicated that she should feed the monkeys on my behalf. I then turned and made to walk away. This clearly posed for her a dilemma of Socratic proportions. Should she refuse my money, since I was getting nothing in return? Should she pocket the money as a windfall? Should she feed the monkeys one bag of peanuts and pocket 10 baht? Should she carry out my instructions to the letter?

I did in fact sneak a look to see what solution she arrived at, and I am sure it was the third one. And it was surely the wisest, as perhaps Socrates and Buddha and Adam Smith would have agreed, for it gave the greatest return to the greatest number: my intention was in part satisfied;
the monkeys benefited; the girl derived exra profit.

Harzer

To Stephen!

I think I need to break this to you gently, but the grammar which jackiebear is working on is Transformational-Generative Grammar. In contrast to more traditional grammars it is, as the word 'generative' suggests, a process grammar.

As such, it attempts to plot the evolutionary pathway of every utterance from non-verbal 'ideation' to the final exposition of the target idea/argument. Each successive stage in this evolution is less abstract than the preceding one and captures more and more of the content inherent in the motivating idea. In the early stages the most suitable structure is worked out; this is clothed with lexical content; and in the end, what may be up to now a series of unlinked clauses are now 'transformed' into the finished sentence.

The exercise jackiebear is working on (or has she already chucked it in?) is to undo the final transformation so as to exhibit the underlying [clause-clause-clause- ] structure.

Please do not just reject this out of hand as you did with jackiebear's plea for assistance. There are some very interesting impications for a grammar of this type. Try a little bedtime reading of Chomsky, or better of someone else's predigested rendering of Chomsky, since Chomsky mimself is rather unreadable.

I need to repeat that I am not an expert on this stuff. I am simply proceeding, as before, to work out the grammar at the basis of jackiebear's course from the questions asked, and from the words 'transformational' and 'generative' in the title.

Harzer

Hi Harzer!

Thanks for your nice reply and amusing tale.
It reminds me of an American poet friend of mine.
Kenneth L. Brown.

He would have laughed hysterically at seeing two people exchanging money over such an activity..... and with desperate tears of laughter running down his cheeks would have screamed something like...

"Man is just a monkey nibbling on a banana of deception"

Anyway, at least they got fed in the end!

Chomsky, by the way, is probably some sort of genius - but unfortunately, as you say, almost totally unreadable. I lost interest in a bookshop after a page or so, I'm afraid. It's really a shame that so many top academics talk in a language that is only appreciated by other academics. It stops some valuable messages getting through.

Best Wishes

Will