Re: Subordinate clauses

Aaron Grahn said:
> Is there a good way to introduce a subordinate clause without a
> particle? For instance in
>
> The dog with the man that I saw was green.
>
> the relative clause is introduced with "that". This is probably a bad
> example, because English doesn't really distinguish (except by word
> order) which one I saw, and which one was with the one that I saw, but
> assume I saw a dog, the dog was with a man, and the dog was green.
>
> In German, I think you might say
>
> Der Hund mit dem Mann, den ich gesehen habe, war grün.
That works, but so does

Der Hund mit dem von mir gesehenen Mann war gruen.


There are analogous constructions without particles in lots of languages.


> The relative pronoun den, being accusative, refers to the accusative
> element in "ich habe einen Hund mit einem Mann gesehen" (I saw a dog
> with a man), so it refers to the dog, even though the dog appears as
> nominative in the actual sentence. Needless to say, this practice
> sometimes seems to me confusing.
Actually, the relative clause could refer to either 'Hund mit dem Mann' or
to 'Mann' in your example. The relative 'den' is accusative because it's
the direct object of 'gesehen'; since both 'Hund' and 'Mann' are
masculine, it could refer to either one. Compare:

Die Katze mit dem Mann, den ich gesehen habe, war gruen.
(I saw the man, and now I'm telling you about his cat.)

Die Katze mit dem Mann, die ich gesehen habe, war gruen.
(I saw the cat with the man, and now I'm telling you it was green.)


(NB: Anaphora that hops over an NP and relies on gender for resolution, as
in the second example here, is perhaps somewhat inelegant, but it
certainly happens often enough in spoken German and in hyper-convoluted
prose.)


-- Mark

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