As I understand things, a relative pronoun is a word such as "that",
"which", "who" etc, which forms the subject of a relative clause, e.g.
"This is the car *that* I bought yesterday." The question is, can these
words also be classified as subordinating conjunctions? If not, is there
a convenient term which includes both, i.e. is there a term for the class
of words which mark non-principal clauses?
Cheers,
Mark B.
According to Mark Barton <mbar…@icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp>:
>As I understand things, a relative pronoun is a word such as "that",
"which", "who" etc, which forms the subject [or object] of a relative
clause, e.g. "This is the car *that* I bought yesterday." The question
is, can these words also be classified as subordinating conjunctions?
No, because they are not conjunctions. In expressions such as the
above, the relative pronoun is =part= of the subordinate clause. Here,
"that" is the object of the verb "bought" in the clause "that I bought
yesterday", and refers to the word "car". Note that you can omit the
subordinate clause altogether and still have a sentence, because it
behaves like an adjective modifying the antecedent: "This is the car."
The only subordinating conjunction I know of is "that". For example,
"I know *that* you bought a car yesterday." It is placed before a
clause, and then it and the clause as a unit can be used as an object
(or occasionally the subject) in the main clause.
> If not, is there a convenient term which includes both, i.e. is there a
>term for the class of words which mark non-principal clauses?
Not that I know of. There are too many ways to mark a non-principal
clause.
–=<*>=–
Want to have some fun?
"I think that that that that man bought was overpriced."
^ ^ ^ ^
| | | |
| | | \__ demonstrative adjective
| | \__ relative pronoun
| \__ demonstrative pronoun
\__ subordinating conjunction
–
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CORRECT NOW: http://www.indirect.com/www/stevemac/ttt-hejmo.html
I want to be a non-conformist — just like all my friends!
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the answer offered on this seemed like sound, standard answer, but it
assumed that ‘linguistic science’ has to be based essentially on english
and overlooked instance after instance in, e.g., hebrew, greek, latin,
where one could not possibly decide without becoming somewhat dogmatic or
opinionated.
barely have time to notice this now. will supply a few examples soon, if
others don’t anticipate me in the meantime with myriad instances of their own.
note that in english itself the shades grow dim between an indirect question
and a relative clause as in:
‘do you know where you hiked?’
‘have you mapped where you hiked?’
which seems the readier candidate to be an indirect question and why?
obvious, isn’t it?
bearded bill of asheville = bthur…@unca.edu