Teacher Discussion Forums

Hello all. Looking for opinions.

"The archives of the medical department of Lourdes are filled with dossiers that detail well-authenticated cases of what are termed miraculous healings."

Does that mean:

The archives are filled with dossiers, and that these dossiers detail cases of miraculous healings.

Or does it mean:

The archives are filled with dossiers, and dossiers in
general are things that detail cases of miraculous healings.

The former - dossiers that... is a defining relative clause.

lolwhites wrote:The former - dossiers that... is a defining relative clause.

Yes, I agree. Some have read it the other way though.

Some have read it the other way though.

Are you in a position to say who? Native speakers? Non-native grammar lawyers? People who don't know the meaning of the word dossier?

'that' can only be used in defining relatative clauses. 'Non-defining' clauses will also require commas at the beginning and end.

lolwhites wrote:

Some have read it the other way though.

Are you in a position to say who? Native speakers? Non-native grammar lawyers? People who don't know the meaning of the word dossier?

Not I, but these people claim they are in such a position.

(We have, in fact, anecdotal evidence that at least some
readers of this passage do interpret it in the latter way.)

http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/Papers/paris.pdf

Stephen Jones wrote:'that' can only be used in defining relatative clauses. 'Non-defining' clauses will also require commas at the beginning and end.

I agree.

lolwhites wrote:The former - dossiers that... is a defining relative clause.

Problems if it were like this?

"The archives of the medical department of Lourdes are filled with dossiers, which detail well-authenticated cases of what are termed miraculous healings."

Meaning would be exactly the same.

Stephen Jones wrote:Meaning would be exactly the same.

So, IYO, it couldn't be taken to mean all dossiers in the world detail miraculous healings?

No, because we know what the word 'dossiers' means. If we had to guess the meaning of 'dossiers' from the context we might well erroneously come to that conclusion.

Stephen Jones wrote:No, because we know what the word 'dossiers' means. If we had to guess the meaning of 'dossiers' from the context we might well erroneously come to that conclusion.

When you say "we" there, who do you feel it includes?

Problems if it were like this?

"The archives of the medical department of Lourdes are filled with dossiers, which detail well-authenticated cases of what are termed miraculous healings."

I agree with Stephen, it is only open to misinterpretation if one has never come across the word dossier before. An adult native speaker should have enough prior knowledge to understand the sentence correctly. I find it hard to believe that a native speaker should interpret it any other way.

lolwhites wrote:

Problems if it were like this?

"The archives of the medical department of Lourdes are filled with dossiers, which detail well-authenticated cases of what are termed miraculous healings."

I agree with Stephen, it is only open to misinterpretation if one has never come across the word dossier before. An adult native speaker should have enough prior knowledge to understand the sentence correctly. I find it hard to believe that a native speaker should interpret it any other way.

Me too. Often though, that can be a problem in ESL classrooms. The native-speaking teacher sometimes forgets that his/her students may not be able to readily interpret from cotext only.

Even a non-native teacher should be familiar with the word dossier, I would have thought. The word isn't that obscure.

The student who makes an intelligent stab at the word dossier and then checks in a dictionary is doing the right thing even if the original guess is wrong. In your original example, however, the relative clause is defining so one can't conclude that all dossiers detail cases if miraculous healings. I would still expect the student to conclude that a dossier is something to do with documents.

Actually, what I'd expect from most students would be "Please, teacher, what means dossier?" i.e. the why-make-the-effort-to-guess-much-less-look-it-up-when-there-is-a-dictionary-on-legs-in-front-of-me school of learning English.