Nancy,
I am with you completely on this one, if I understand correctly. If we can call "yesterday" an adverbial noun, so we ought to call "when" in the analogous position an "adverbial pronoun." It is indeed relative, but calling it a relative adverb would reverse the relationship: "so" would be a relative adverb. I guess "when" is actually an "adverbial relative pronoun" in the situation you cite.
Bruce
----- Original Message -----
From: Nancy Tuten
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 8:38 PM
Subject: Re: The necessity for classification
Everything that has been posted about this topic over the past few days underscores the importance of talking about language in terms of function and not form.
This point was driven home to me this week as I talked with my students about adjective clauses that begin with words normally thought of as adverbs: "where," "when," and "why." I think a good case can be made for regarding them as functioning pronominally (is that a word?) in these particular constructions.
With most adjective/relative clauses, the relative pronoun refers to a specific noun in another clause. Thus, in the sentence "She is the woman whom I met at a party," a traditional diagram would show a dotted line connecting "whom" in the relative clause to "woman" in the main clause. The reader, upon seeing the clause "whom I met at a party," thinks "woman I met at a party."
It stands to reason, then, that "where," "when," and "why" function more like pronominals than like adverbs in cases where the adjective clause starts with one of those words.
I am a huge fan of Martha Kolln's Understanding English Grammar. Martha, in your diagrams of such clauses (adjective clauses launched by an adverb), you show the adverb on a straight line under the verb of the adjective clause. But could we not treat the "where," "when," or "why" as if it were the object of a prepositional phrase with an elliptical preposition? The prepositional phrase as a unit functions adverbially in its own clause, but the word itself functions nominally in its relation to the other clause-as a replacement for the word to which we say it is connected.
Take this sentence, for example:
This is the house where I was born.
The dotted line connecting the adjective clause "where I was born" to the main clause would connect "where" to "house." "Where" acts just like a pronoun; that is, when we read that adjective clause, the meaning conveyed is "I was born [in] house" or "I was born [in] where."
My students were inclined to treat these words as objects of prepositional phrases with elliptical prepositions because earlier in the text, they were taught that words like "yesterday" and "tomorrow" and "Friday" are diagrammed as objects of prepositional phrases with elliptical prepositions. And I have implored them so often to think in terms of a word's function and not its form that they were comfortable seeing "when," "where," and "why" functioning pronominally in these particular cases.
When they are trying to figure out how a phrase or clause is related to the rest of a sentence, my students get the best results when they ask themselves "What question does this word/phrase/clause answer?" If we ask ourselves what question "where" answers in its own clause (not what question does the entire clause answer-that would be "which house?"), we would answer "where I was born." But the answer to the question "where was I born?" is "in house," not simply "house."
I'm not sure I'm being clear here. I should have learned by now not to post to this very intelligent group late at night! But the bottom line is this: I am much more concerned that my students are thinking about and recognizing the relationships among words, phrases, and clauses than I am that they be able to put words in form classes-a frustrating if not completely futile exercise. I am convinced that as they get better at recognizing the functions of words in a construction, they become clearer thinkers and more precise writers.
Nancy
Nancy L. Tuten, PhD
Professor of English
Director of the Writing-across-the-Curriculum Program
Columbia College
Columbia, South Carolina
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803-786-3706
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From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Castilleja, Janet
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 9:30 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [BULK] A new question was The necessity for classification was: Those old transitivity blues was Help for a puzzled teacher
One of my former students sent me an email asking this question: I have a grammar question I have yet to find an answer to, and I thought, "Who better to ask than Janet?" So, regarding the use of the word 'wondering', I would like to know if I should use a question mark at the end of a sentence such as: "I was wondering if you are going to the store?" or "I wonder why it rains?" My first inclination is that these are statements, not questions. However, I have run into question marks at the end of such sentences frequently of late. I must know the truth!
I believe I would treat this as reported speech not requiring a question mark. What do others think?
Janet Castilleja
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ronald Sheen
Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2007 6:20 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [BULK] The necessity for classification was: Those old transitivity blues was Help for a puzzled teacher
Importance: Low
Craig writes:
When classification becomes an end in itself, the living,
dynamic language gets left behind.
This may be so in the case of purely linguistic analysis. However, I do not agree that this reflects the recent comments related to the ESL context. Therein, assuming that one is adopting an explicit approach to explaining the difference between phrasal and prepositional verbs, first, one has to have a means of classifying the two, and second, one has to provide the students with a clear way of distinguishing them.
Ron Sheen
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