Re: Grammar-holes: secondary predication

On Tue, 17 Jul 2007 21:29:18 +0100, And Rosta wrote:

>"I just met the woman who Tom is the son of Bill and" really does strike me as
a hole, in that it's something that one might well want to say.

A working circumvention (but probably not one that you'd think of immediately)
might be "...the woman for whom Bill sired Tom"? Or, to be a bore, "Tom's
mother" would work most of the time anyway ;)

But this is sidestepping the actual issue by going into semantics... let's see if I
can think of a similar example where this cannot be done. Hmm.
  "We found some of the apples of which and Malaysian cinnamon the new
cafe's pie gets its aroma from for sale at the market"
Could make less sense still... working possessiv construction also in...
  "Go along the road at which Beth lives at the crossing of and the river's"
No, that can be rephrased as "at which and the river's crossing Beth lives",
which is better. Actually, this seems to be the same solution as Eugene's
modulo some details:
  "...the woman of whom and Bill's son Tom is"
No, that should be "whose and Bill's"; except that doesn't work either. Possibly
the gist is that while "which and X('s)" is OK, "whom and X" / "whose and X's"
aren't?

John Vertical

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