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Re: Subordinate clauses

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Thursday, June 17, 2004, 19:39
En réponse à Jonathan Knibb :

  Le type que j'ai vu, là, vert qu'il était, son chien.

>At the risk of starting YA-French-syntax-T, may I ask how >our resident French experts would analyse the third >example? If one interprets the "qu'" five words back from >the end as signalling a relative clause (as in 'que j'ai vu'), >then 'vert qu'il etait' appears to be an adjective phrase >putting itself forward as a sentence ... an odd situation.
This is simply a short form of "c'est vert qu'il était, son chien". "C'est... que" (and thus by extension "que" after a word) is the standard Spoken French way of topicalising, and it just happens that Spoken French can topicalise adjectives as well as nouns. All pretty simple and not special for a polysynthetic language ;) . Christophe Grandsire. http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.