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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Burkhard Leuschner - Paedagogische Hochschule Schwaebisch Gmuend, Germany E-mail: [log in to unmask] [h] Fax: +49 7383 2212 HTTP://WWW.PH-GMUEND.DE/PHG/PHONLINE/Englisch/index.htm