>Michael,

The clause in question is undoubtedly restrictive; otherwise, the sentence
would effectively read as follows:  'a review from a man, if fair and
moderately favourable, is in all respects the best kind of review' -- which
has the unlikely implication that Darwin was a misogynist!

Edmond



Dr. Edmond Wright
3 Boathouse Court
Trafalgar Road
Cambridge
CB4 1DU
England

Email: [log in to unmask]
Website: http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/elw33/
Phone [00 44] (0)1223 350256







I was recently re-examining a short letter written by Charles Darwin in
> 1860 to Asa Gray, since I had used an excerpt of it to discuss speech acts
> and text type with my students. I began looking at the clause structures
> and became puzzled by the relative clause in the passage quoted below
> which is punctuated as a non-restrictive relative.  I began to wonder
> whether this clause "who is not a convert" really has a restrictive force
> to it and has been punctuated by Darwin in a way that would be
> unconventional today. There is a clearly restrictive relative at the end
> of the passage, so we see that Darwin does seem to make the distinction in
> his punctuation.
> 
> "What you say about my book gratifies me most deeply, and I wish I could
> feel all was deserved by me. I quite think a review from a man, who is not
> an entire convert, if fair and moderately favourable, is in all respects
> the best kind of review.... It is the highest possible gratification to me
> to think that you have found my book worth reading and reflection; for you
> and three others I put down in my own mind as the judges whose opinions I
> should value most of all."
> 
> (1) How do you read "who is not a convert"?  Can you read it
> non-restrictively?
> (2) Were punctuation rules for restrictive vs. non-restrictive relative
> clauses established by the mid-19th century?  Were/are there differences
> between British and American punctuation of non-restrictive clauses?
> (3) Could this instance be merely a Darwinian eccentricity?
> 
> I might add that I just went back to the Gutenberg Project page where I
> originally read this letter,
> <http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext00/2llcd10.txt> and I searched the
> text for occurrences of "which" and found that the punctuation in Darwin's
> correspondence is pretty regular, though there are a couple of relative
> clauses set off by commas that I find difficult to read as
> non-restrictive.
> 
> R. Michael Medley, Director
> Intensive English Program
> Professor of English
> Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, VA 22802
> 
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
>      http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> and select "Join or leave the list"
> 
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/