Re: Relative clauses

--- caeruleancentaur <caeruleancentaur@...>
wrote:

>  I should
> have written, "I do not want Senjecas to have
> relative pronouns,
> relative adjectives, etc."
>
> "Have you seen which book he is reading?"
>
> I believe that in that sentence "which" is a
> relative adjective.
>
> Charlie
>
One simple-minded way for a language to avoid such
constructions is to recognize that two distinct events
have taken place and to give each event its own
sentence:

"I saw the book that John gave you." becomes:

"John gave you a book."
"(Then) I saw same book."


In the sentence "Have you seen which book he is
reading?" there are three events described, (reading,
seeing, inquiring) one of which is hypothetical:

"He is reading a book." (factual)
"You (might) have seen same book." (hypothetical)
"I inguire about truth of second statement." (factual)

The third statement might be replaced with a particle
that indicates a request for validation of the
statement to which it is attached:

"He reads book."
"You have seen same book, eh?"

I can't imagine any relative clause situation which
could not be decomposed into a number of seperate
sentences, each describing one of the events described
by the more complex construction.


--gary