Re: Subordinate clauses

--- Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> wrote:
> Carsten Becker wrote:
> >
> >  main clause pt. 1      relative clause  main
> clause pt. 2
> > |--------^---------| |---------^---------|
> |---^---|
> > Der Hund des Mannes, den ich gesehen habe, war
> grün.
> > ---v---- ----v-----  -v- -v- ------v-----  -v-
> -v--
> >   NOM.      GEN.      |   |        |      VERB ???
> > Subject              ACC NOM     VERB
> >                       | Subject
> >                       |
> >                       `-{ This is the relative
> pronoun   }
> >                         { referring to "der Hund",
> which }
> >                         { is the subject of the
> main     }
> >                         { clause. This is
> grammatically. }
> >                         { My feeling tells me that
> the   }
> >                         { relative pronoun refers
> to the }
> >                         { genitive object in this
> case.  }
> >                         { But I may be wrong.
> Anyone?    }
>
> That's what I was wondering... Since both Hund and
> Mann are masculing, is
> there any way in Germ. to make the relative pronoun
> unambiguously refer to
> one or the other.  Engl. has this possibility, as
> there are three Engl.
> versions of your German sentence, two of which are
> unambiguous--
>
> 1. The dog of the man_who(m)_ I saw was green--
> 'who(m)' clearly refers to
> the man. So would "The man's dog, whom I saw,..."
> but awkwardly (needs
> different intonation).
>
> 2. The dog of the man (~The man's dog) _which_ I
> saw.... -- clearly refers
> to the dog.
>
> The 3d, which is causing all the contention,--
> == (a) The dog of the man }
> OR (b) The man's dog     }  _that_ I saw...
>
> is unfortunately amenable to either interpretation
> since _that_ can refer to
> either antecedent, though IMHO in practice a 'that'
> Rel.Cl. tends to
> directly follow its antecedent.
If I flatly translate the German example into French,
there is only one possible meaning:

Le chien de l'homme que j'ai vu était vert.

Here it is definitely the dog, and not the man, who
was green (and it is the man I saw, not the dog). But
German uses a comma before a relative clause, maybe
that's why it might be more ambiguous (and yet both
"chien" and "homme" are masculine, just like in German
- but it doesn't play any role here, because "que" is
invariable). Anyway, there can't be any comma there in
French. And this sentence is perfectly correct and
understandable.

There are always possible ambiguities in a language.
The rule of common sense is: if your sentence is
ambiguous, then just turn it another way. Except in
case you really want it to be ambiguous.


=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)


		
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