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16 - Other types of dependent clause

Homework

(We're) Looking for Girls who are boys Who like boys to be girls Who do boys like they're girls Who do girls like they're boys. Always should be someone you really love.

Apart from the main cause ("We're looking for Girls", "Always should be someone"), this has 6 dependent clauses with finite verbs:

  1. ...who are boys
  2. Who like boys to be girls
  3. Who do boys like they're girls
  4. Who do girls like they're boys.
  5. …you really love

Theses are dependent clauses but they are not adverbial clauses. We're going to be looking at dependent clauses which are not adverbial clauses.

Clinical relevance

  1. Language impaired individuals have particular difficulties comprehending and producing "complex" sentences
  2. Complex sentences are particularly important in educational and workplace settings.

Other types of dependent clause

Last week, we looked at adverbial clauses, these come inside an adverbial:

  1. [ When [ I fall in love ADVERBIAL.CLAUSE $]$ ADVERBIAL ] it will be forever

Dependent clauses can come inside any other syntactic function (except the Verb Complex): S, Od, Oi, Cs, Co, and Pmod

Dependent clauses as a complement of the verb (Od, Oi, Cs, Co)

Od and Oi position

Dependent clauses in Direct Object position

  1. Last night I dreamt [ (that) somebody loved me Od] (the Smiths)
  2. I'll tell [ you Oi ] [ what I want Od ] (Spice Girls)
  3. I told [ you Oi ] [ I was ill Oi ] (Spike Milligan's Epitaph)

It may be easier to see that it is a Direct Object if you substitute it for the word "something" (the SOMETHING TEST!!)

  1. Last night I dreamt SOMETHING → somebody loved me.
  2. I told you SOMETHING → I was ill.
  3. I'll tell you SOMETHING → What I want.

Cs and Co position

Clauses can also come as Subject or Object Complement

  1. Money, that's [ what I want Cs ] (Barrett Strong - Old Motown Hit)
  2. I'll name [ this ship Od ] [ whatever I want Co ] (King Charle being moody)

Again, we can substitute the phrase with SOMETHING:

  1. Money, that's SOMETHING
  2. I'll name this ship SOMETHING

Dependent clauses in Subject Position

Here is an example of a dependent clause in subject position

  1. [ That she passed the exam S ] surprised her teacher.

However, it sounds a bit weird. It would be much more natural to say to move the long Subject to the end and replace it with a dummy/expletive "it":

  1. It surprised her teacher [ that she passed the exam ]

Why does this happen? In English we do not like very long phrases ar the beginning of a sentence. Here is another example

  1. I feel _ about weddings [ the way cats feel about waterslides ] (Nell Frizelle, Guardian)

The phrase "the way cats feel about waterslides" has moved from its initial position (shown by the underscore):

  1. I feel [ the way cats feel about waterslides ] about weddings.

But this just doesn't work!!

Some researchers have suggested that there is a cross-linguistic tendency to shift long phrases to the end of a sentence to "save the difficult things till last". However, some languages seem to like long phrases at the front (Japanese).

Dependent clauses in Post-modifer Position

A postmodifier is a phrase which comes after a noun and modifies it.

  1. I found the book [ under the sofa ]
  2. I saw a man [ with the wooden leg ]

Clauses can also come in postmodifier position

  1. She never gave me a reason [ why she arrived late ]
  2. I didn't believe Giles' claim [ that Geoff ate the chocolate cake ]
  3. I found the book [ that was under the sofa ]
  4. I saw a man [ who had a wooden leg ]

The final two examples are "relative" clauses.

Focus on relative clauses

Girls who are boys...

This is the type of clause that appears in the chorus of Girls and Boys:

(We're) Looking for Girls who are boys Who like boys to be girls Who do boys like they're girls Who do girls like they're boys. Always should be someone you really love.

The restrictive / non-restrictive distinction

These are "restrictive" relative clauses. They take a set of entities, and restrict them to those entities with a specific property. e.g. "girls who are boys" is a subset of "girls". We can also use non-restrictive relative clauses, which just provide extra information.

  1. The Paris which is in Texas is warmer than the Paris which is in France (restrictive relative clauses)
  2. Paris, which is the capital of France, is a lovely city (non-restrictive relative clauses)

Properties of relative clauses

(a) Summary of properties

Relative clauses have a number of interesting properties.

  1. They are headed by a relative pronoun (who, that, which).
  2. The can contain unusual word orders (e.g. There's the cat OBJ I SUBJ. saw V)
  3. They can split Subjects from Verbs

(b) The relative pronoun

The word which introduces the relative clause (that, which, who) is best described as a Pronoun. Why?

  1. She likes her: Pronouns are marked for CASE.
  2. She likes it: Pronouns are marked for ANIMACY DISTINCTION

Now let's look at case-marking in relative pronouns:

  1. There's the man who saw him
  2. There's the man whom he saw

And the animacy distinction

  1. There's the man who I saw.
  2. I found the money that I dropped.

Occasionally the relative pronoun can be omitted:

  1. I found the money (that) I dropped

The rules for this are slightly complicated.

We can imagine the relative pronoun as "moving" to the front of the relative clause:

  1. He saw him -> There's the man whom he saw.

(c) Unusual word orders

When the relative pronoun refers to the OBJECT, we have an unusual (OSV) word order:

  1. There's the man who Obj. I Subj. saw V
  2. There's the fish that that Obj. she Subj. ate V

(d) Splitting subjects from verbs

If relative clauses come in the middle of sentences they can split Subjects from Verbs

  1. The man [ who I saw ] was happy

This makes sentences with centre-embedded relative clauses particularly hard to process.

Relative clauses in research

Relative clauses are very widely used in linguistic research because:

  1. They vary in interesting ways across languages

  2. In some languages they allow you create simple and complex versions of the same sentence WITHOUT MAKING ANY CHANGES TO THE WORDS IN THE SENTENCE

e.g. There's the cat that chased the dog / There's the dog that the cat chased

This is incredibly useful because we can control for lexical factors and sentence length, while focusing on syntactic complexity.

  1. They are very sensitive to overall linguistic ability. Language impaired individuals find relative clauses particularly difficult to process.