This message was originally submitted by William J. McCleary
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Burkhard, you seem to be trying to confuse us. I always thought it was very
useful to say something like a clause is a noun clause. That way, we know
that the clause is functioning in the same manner as a one-word noun. That
is, it is a subject, a direct object, or some such thing.
And to say that it's illogical for a word to be able to serve more than one
function also confuses me. In "the horse barn," isn't horse functioning as
an adjective, even though it's usually a noun? In "I will fish for pike,"
isn't fish functioning as a verb, even though in other contexts it could be
a noun or an adjective?
To me, most of the structures you imply would be illogical to call nouns
could be nouns in the right contexts. And all of the structures you imply
would be illogical to call adjectives could be adjectives in the right
contexts. True, you might want to call these things nominals and
adjectivals if you wanted a label for all types of things that could be
used in the functions of nouns and adjectives, but that's only a
convenience--or so I thought.
I'm confused. Can you enlighten us?
>This message was originally submitted by
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>
>Wollin says:
>
>>I don't see anything in Leuschner's response that helps explain why the
>>whom in the first sentence cannot be omitted while the one in the second
>>sentence can. Whereas, if we say that if it functions as a noun, it is a
>>noun, we get an explanation.
>
>>> >"I don't know who(m) I saw last night".
>>> >"I like the girl who(m) i saw last night.
>
>1. Of course, you can call anything anything at all. You might call it
>'moon' or 'XYZ'. And argue: if we say it functions as the moon, it is the
>moon.
>
>2. Whatever you call it, whether 'moon' or 'noun' or 'wh-sentence', the
>name as such does not explain anything at all.
>
>3. Neither would the name 'adjective' for the wh-sentence in (2) explain
>why 'who(m)' can be omitted there.
>
>4. If 'who(m) I saw last night' IS a noun sometimes, and an adjective at
>other times, normal human logic goes down the drain. No scientist would
>accept something so blantantly illogical, only language people put up with
>this. And Even defend it.Strange!
>
>5. BTW, to apply some sort of internal logic. If the wh-sentence is called
>noun in the first sentence, then these structures would also have to be
>called nouns:
>
>that he did it
>her
>about it
>he did it
>if he saw her
>whether everybody is ok
>
>And these would all have to be called adjectives:
>
>in the house
>running down the road
>made in Japan
>fitting in almost every car
>the
>
>6. I mean if it helps a body to call these completely different
grammatical
>structures nouns and adjectives - no problem. But they shouldn't infuse
>students with this muddled way of thinking, because students before they
>come to school look at the world, and this includes language, like
>scientists, it's only afterwards, when school teachers are done with them
>and they come to college that they have lost their natural gift of logical
>thinking.
>
>7. Ah, yes, and how to explain that sometimes wh-pronouns can be omitted
>and sometimes they can't? Wh-sentences, as I tried to show, perform a
great
>number of functions. When they are noun attributes, and the pronoun
>functions as object or as a 'prepositional object', then they pronoun is
>sometimes replaced by zero. In non-standard English this happens also when
>the pronoun has subject function. This is not really an explanation, it is
>just a description.
>
>Is there an explanation? I'm not sure. You might argue that the noun
(girl)
>refers to the same referent as the pronoun and that therefore the pronoun
>need not be repeated. But the same is true for appositives (non-defining
>relative clauses), and there the pronoun cannot be 'omitted' (perhaps in
>non-standard English - but this where native speakers are the experts).
>
>So there doesn't really seem to be an EXPLANATION, we are left with
>DESCRIBING the conventions adhered to by those speakers whose English is
>usually called 'standard'.
>
>Anyway, using a word-class label (like 'noun') for a function certainly
>does not explain anything.
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------
>Burkhard Leuschner - Paedagogische Hochschule Schwaebisch Gmuend, Germany
>E-mail: [log in to unmask] [h] Fax: +49 7383 2212
William J. McCleary Editor: Composition Chronicle
Associate Prof. of English Viceroy Publications
Coordinator of Secondary English 3247 Bronson Hill Road
SUNY at Cortland Livonia, NY 14487
607-753-2076 716-346-6859
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