Re: Subordinate clauses

Aaron Grahn wrote:

> 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.
We'll assume that because you say so, but reading #1 IMO would be:
the dog with the man [I saw the man] was green.

If you insert a proper noun or more definite noun the ambiguity tends goes
away:

The dog with Percy that I saw....
The dog with your father that I saw... (marginal IMO)
In these cases, careful speakers might use "whom" if Percy/father were the
antecedent-- but careful speakers are rare anymore....:-(((

>
> In German, I think you might say
>
> Der Hund mit dem Mann, den ich gesehen habe, war grün.
>
> 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.
Not so sure about that.  _den_ is in the accusative simply because it is the
object of gesehen habe, not because it refers to the dog.  I find this
sentence just as ambiguous as the Engl. equivalent.  German speakers, what's
your opinion???

One part of the problem is that both "dog" and "man/etc." are both animate,
and in this case at least apparently male.  If a language somehow
distinguished anim.-human from anim-nonhuman, you could avoid ambiguity; but
you're going to need _some_ way to mark which antecedent your relative
clause refers to.

>
> My current solution, in an agglutinating language (currently called
> Auton or Old Auton) with no particles (even pronouns end up with long
> case, person, and number suffices) is something like
>
> Dog+NOM man+DAT, animate+NOM+3rd see+1st+PRES-IND, be+3rd+PAST-IND
> green+ACC.
>
> Literally "Dog (with) man, (I) saw it, was green".
OK, I see what you're doing but for unclear reasons it bothers me....
What will happen if the rel.clause also has a 3d pers. subject?
"The dog that the man killed was green..."????
"The man that(whom) the dog killed was green..."???