Re: Subordinate clauses

Sally Caves wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "David Barrow" <davidab@...>
>
> > David says
> > You may have missed something about my sentence
> > Your sentence
> >
> >(1) 'The dog that I saw that was with the man was green'   > >
{David's sentence}
> >(2) 'The dog that I saw was with the man was green'
Excuse me, the two S's say exactly the same thing, and aside from the
delected second "that", the same structure.

Main sentence: The dog was green.
Embed 1: I saw the dog
Embed 2: the dog was with the man

Somewhere in the derivation, Embed 1 & 2 are combinable into
Embed 1-prime: I saw the dog AND I saw that the dog was with the man. which
paraphrase to: I saw the dog that was with the man. When you embed this into
Main Sentence, lo and behold--

The dog |that I saw that was with the man| was green.

It would be easier to diagram this on paper, but alas not in email.


To my view, Sally's (1) is better for written Engl., David's (2) would be
acceptable in spoken, where the intonation would change between man | green.
Otherwise, in its written form, it takes a while to puzzle out.


> Wouldn't it be easier just to say "The dog that I saw with the man was
> green"?
LOL And here we are, by circuitous vicus, right back at Aaron's original
example.............Perhaps that suggests we should abandon the thread, or
convert it to a YAEPT or something. :-)))))