At 15:33 02.07.1999 -0400, Ed Vravra wrote:
> I have been putting a grammar course on-line, with answer keys, and
I'm wondering how members of ATEG would explain "as many travelers will
remember" in the following sentence from the opening paragraph of James'
"Daisy Miller":
>
>There are, indeed, many hotels, for the entertainment of tourists is the
business of the place, which, as many travelers will remember, is seated
upon the edge of a remarkably blue lake--a lake that it behooves every
tourist to visit.
There have been many interesting suggestions, and some are very close to my
own. But not quite, so I dare add my own two Euro-cent's worth.
1. The structure of the as-structure.
'as many travelers will remember' is a SVO-sentence with 'as' playing the
role of object (the object is not just 'understood', as someone suggested.
'As' is therefore a pronoun. And I'd call it a PRONOUN SENTENCE. A pronoun
sentence is one where a pronoun fills a slot and then goes to the front of
the sentence. Other pronouns that fill sentence slots and then go to the
front and thus create pronoun sentences are the wh-pronouns, and the
pronoun 'that'.
2. The function of pronoun sentences
Pronoun sentences perform various functions. Wh-sentences can be used all
on their own, e.g. in headlines (Why Lincoln grew a beard), or they
function as objects or subjects etc. in sentences. When they function as
attributes in noun groups they are called defining relative clauses, when
they function as appositives of noun groups they are called non-defining
relative clauses (the above which-sentence is one of these). There are more
possible functions.
3. Pronoun sentences as PARAGRAPH slotfillers
One function, which takes the pronoun sentence outside the sentence, as it
were, has been mentioned several times, but I'm not quite satisfied with
the explanation. Traditional grammar usually does not look beyond the
sentence. But grammar does not stop with the sentence, there is also
something like text grammar. Many unsatisfactory traditional rules are
unsatisfactory because they try to explain something within the frame of
sentence grammar which belongs, in fact, to the realm of text grammar.
Which-sentences, for example, can be relative clauses (when they function
as attributes in noun groups), but they are no longer 'relative clauses'
when they function as objects, nor are they relative clauses when they
'modify' (whatever that may mean) whole sentences.
When which-sentences are used in this latter function, they sort of
summarize or conclude what has been said before. Now when you look for
examples of this function you will find that very often it is not sentences
they summarize, but whole paragraphs.
Paragraphs (the main type, there is a second one) have four slots: a topic
slot, a description slot, an antithesis slot, and a conclusion slot. Which
sentences can fill the conclusion slot in paragraphs.
AND THIS IS PRECISELY THE FUNCTION THAT OUR AS-SENTENCE PERFORMS, TOO.
And what about which-sentences as sentence modifiers? It just looks like
they 'modify' a sentence. In paragraphs only the topic-slot and the
conclusion slot are necessary slots, the other two are free slots (cf
adverbial of manner slots in sentences, which are free, while the object
slot with 'remember', for example, is structurally necessary). Therefore we
can have what I call MICRO-paragraphs, where the topic-slot is filled,
e.g., by a normal statement and the conclusion slot e.g. by a
pronoun-sentence.
Hugh ...
Burkhard Leuschner
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