Using 'where' in relative clauses

[abufletcher]

I'd also suggest that "Beijing is my HOMETOWN" is odd all on it's own. Does any English speaker actually use this "___ is my hometown" formulation? I'd always just say, "I'm from LA."

[abufletcher]

BTW, I suppose I should mention that my Ph.D. dissertation was entitled "Co-constructing competence: Turn Construction and repair in novice-to-novice second language interaction." So I have more than a passing interesting in how turns-at--talk get constructed in real-time.

BTW, in my data (Japanese 2nd year university students) I didn't have a single instance of a complex sentence structure.

[fluffyhamster]

I didn't really have time before to think about the OP's question, but to me, a simpler fact (perhaps, in a relative clause or taking the form of an apposition, as part of something larger) is what's struggling to emerge and most central:

"Beijing ((, which) IS) my hometown"

It would seem slightly unnatural to separate this "informative" unit with (as Sonya pointed out) the subjectless relative clause 'where will hold the 2008 Olympics' (a passive would however be acceptable: 'where the 2008 Olympics will be held'), especially since the latter fact is one that anyone who's been on planet earth for the past year or so would undoubtedly know anyway; then, SJ has hinted at something that is perhaps along the same lines as the following:
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... php?t=4910

[fluffyhamster]

All this talk of probabilities got me thinking...

Beijing, v where will hold the 2008 Olympics v, is my hometown (The part between the v v seems like a question word order when no NP comes between the question word and the aux, so... -> see v below v

Where(/which city) will hold the 2008 Olympics?


The following is not an answer, BTW, but the start to some sort of discourse (likely, not about Bejing simply being one's hometown!):

Beijing, where (?the city where/??the city in which) the 2008 Olympics will be held, is...

[sonya]

I thought I'd flesh out my original response to make it clearer for the original poster. I hope this helps.

Where replaces the object, while which replaces a subject, and isn't necessarily a place.

ie: This is a picture of Glasgow, where (obj) my friend is from, which (subj) is my hometown too.

- but not *which my friend is from, *where is my hometown too

this is because these clauses are underlyingly like this:

My friend is from *obj* => obj = where => gets fronted to the relative pronoun position => where my friend is from

*subj* is my hometown too => subj = which => is put into the relative pronoun position => which is my hometown too

I had a tricky time learning the equivalent in French (a bit more complex) but my teacher explained it really well. Go through a few phrases, identifying the object or the subject until everyone gets the hang of telling the two apart, and have them replace the place names with the appropriate pronoun. It seems really complex until you break it down and do it a few times, then it becomes like second nature.

[Stephen Jones]

Dear Sonya

You are completely wrong. 'Which' can replace the subject or the object, that is to say a noun or noun phrase.

'Where', like 'here' or 'there' replaces an adverbial, which is normally a noun phrase fronted by a preposition.

[sonya]

cool.. could you give some examples to explain what you're saying?

[abufletcher]

I've always found the meta-grammatical label "place adverb" to be extremely silly. In what possible sense is "here" an "adverb?" Does it make any logical sense to say that "here" describes "lives"? Personally I'd feel more comfortable calling "t/here" a "location pronoun" or something like that and therefore being able to describe "My Brother lives there" as having a SVO order. Actually in Japanese "here" and "there" ARE treated as nominals (koko-ni, asoko-ni).

Anyway, so back to an attempt at a linear approach. How about this as a cut 'n paste format:

PLACE, ((WHERE (DESCRIPTION OF ACTION DONE IN THIS PLACE)))...

Examples:

Glasgow, where ((my brother lives)),...
Beijing, where ((the Olympics will be held))...
LA, where ((people all rollerblade to work))...
Tokyo, where ((you can pay a pretty girl in a maid costume to call you master))...

Hmm...could it really be THAT simple? There's got to be a wrinkle in there somewhere.

[abufletcher]

And now we can see what's wrong with the OP's first two examples:

We often go to visit our friends in Bristol, where((is 30 miles away)).
Beijing, where ((will hold the 2008 Olympics)), is my hometown.

So it seems that "where" must be followed by a "sentence-like" construction headed with a noun phrase. Now the next step would be to consider what sorts of actions get "packaged" as where-parentheticals, which is to say, WHY do people insert where-parentheticals?

My experience with conversation analysis leads me to believe that this is linked to "recipient design" issues. That is, in the real world we make lexical choices based on our (typically very successful) attempts to put ourselves into the mind of the talk-recipient.

This is about as far as "intuition" is likely to be able to take us. At this point it's time to get out the recording devices, record some naturally occurring talk, and find out what ACTUAL uses, out in the ACTUAL WORLD, people find for where-parentheticals.

[abufletcher]

BTW, I find it curious that the bracket bits in the first two examples below seem somehow incomplete while the bits in the next two sound like the sorts of things that teachers typically accept as a "complete thought."

Glasgow, where ((my brother lives)),...
Beijing, where ((the Olympics will be held))...

LA, where ((people all rollerblade to work))...
Tokyo, where ((you can pay a pretty girl in a maid costume to call you master))...

So what exactly is "missing" from "My brother lives..." Is an "adverb" a required part of the "syntactic" patterning of "live?" Is "live" actually the relevant lexical unit or are there actually multiple verbal-adverbal chunks involving "live" with somewhat independent meanings, for example:

(live large)
(live here/there)
(live longer)
(live with)

According to the Cobuild site the most frequent collocates of "live" (in the following position) are: in, where, with, and here.

The next example ("The Olympics will be held") seems ok if one hears this in a rather imperial way ("They WILL be held."). But I suspect that the "will be held" chunk regularly co-occurs with a location and/or time chunk. And it is this frequency of collocation that creates the sense that something is "wrong" here.

[Nic]

Thank you all so much for your ideas. Unfortunately, I'm not a linguist, so some things were a bit beyond me - it's clear to me that I need to learn more. Guess I should be visiting this forum more often!

Some people remarked on the oddity of the examples - the 'wrong' ones were produced by my students, the 'correct' one was taken from a grammar book. I agree with the comment that 'hometown' is rarely used by native speakers, but my Chinese students use it so often that, as it's not wrong, just uncommon, I don't correct it.

While the ideas I read were really interesting, to be honest I'm still confused and wondering how they impact on my teaching. There seems to be some debate as to how exactly we use 'where' in relative clauses and so I'd like to know: how do you teach this point to your students?

Nic

[abufletcher]

Nic, first of all, I'd only teach this structure to high intermediate or advanced learners. In other words, I wouldn't specificaly teach this unless they were already spontaneously using simple sorts of complex sentences (e.g. "The movie that I watched last night was good.").

If they ARE ready to learn it, then I would teach it just as I've laid it out above:

(PLACE) (where) (SENTENCE ABOUT PLACE)

(Beijing) (where) (my family lives)


Actually I'd teach this as a two step process. Have them write out the two sentences in this complex sentence:

BEIJING is my hometown.
My family lives THERE.

Then teach them how to combine them by dropping the THERE. Forget any "grammar rules."

[Stephen Jones]

Dear nic

Your thread appears to have been hijacked.

The way to explain why your students are wrong is to compare 'where', 'there', and 'here' with 'which', 'it', and 'they'.

A supermarket is a big shop.
It is a shop.

You buy food at a supermarket.
You buy food there.

'There' , like 'where' and 'here', replaces a pronoun plus a noun phrase. 'Which', like 'it' or 'they' replaces a noun phrase alone. So you can think as 'where' being the same as preposition plus 'which'.

The supermarket where I usually buy my food is just opposite my house.
The supermarket which I usually buy my food at is just opposite my house.

Note that the preposition comes after 'which' but the construction is still 'at' + 'which'. (Note also that in this last example in spoken English you would normally omit the which).

If your students are making the mistakes you mention, this is how you can try and explain how they are wrong.

Now, when I am teaching relative clauses, I like to start with defining relative clauses (those without commas around them). So we do lots of exercises like
A pilot is a man who flies planes
A thermometer is a device which measures heat.
A cinema is a place where you can see films.
Christmas is the time when you eat and spend too much and have big arguments with your family.
I then practise with definition quizzes and so on.

I never start the way abufletcher suggests, by putting two sentences and asking them to combine them. Students end up being obsessed with the mechanics of the exercise and miss the point completely.

Defining relative clauses are high frequency and of use both in EAP and in the process of learning a second language. On the other hand, non-defining relative clauses, like the example you started off the post with, are rare in spoken English, though common in written English.

Thus I prefer to teach non-defining relative clauses for recognition purposes only. That is to say when doing reading comprehension asking the students what the 'who', or 'which' or 'where' is referring to. I see little need to get them to produce sentences such as the one you gave.

Now, when the students are doing advanced writing classes, you may have to teach the difference between defining and non-defining clauses
I phoned my brother, who lives in Seattle.
I phoned my brother who lives in Seattle and emailed my brother in Australia.
and show how they could improve their prose by producing some. You are unlikely to be teaching at that level too often though.

Incidentally, I would ignore most of abufletcher's posts. He has just got a PhD, and people with new PhD's are like people with new girlfriends. They take every possible opportunity to introduce them into the conversation and expound on how wonderful they are and what a difference they have made to their life.

The difference is that people eventually tire of their girlfriends.

[mesmark]

ah.. common now steven. We still love you.

Maybe we could all try to post our ideas, advice, and suggestions without trying to tear someone else down to make ourselves look better.

Tact goes a long way.

[abufletcher]

Actually, Steven's right! But she's just SOOOO hot and I'm in LUUUV!

I didn't really intend to hijack the thread but I do admit to "borrowing" it in the hopes of derailing yet another stoggy grammar answer.