Johanna,

My analysis too.  Rather more clearly laid out though.  Nice bit.

Herb



Subject: Re: Help with parsing
 
  "President Bush, who polls say has the lowest approval rating [of] any
second-term President, is making adjustments to his Social Security
proposal."

Let's take the bottom-most clause:
[Pres. Bush] has the lowest approval rating [of] any second-term President.

That gets inserted as a direct-object clause in "Polls say [that] ... ":
Polls say [that] [Pres. Bush] has the lowest approval rating [of] any
second-term President.

The "that" can be omitted because the clause about ratings is a
direct-object clause:
Polls say [Pres. Bush] has the lowest approval rating [of] any
second-term President.

"Pres. Bush" is referred to by "who" and appears at ("is moved to") the
front of the relative clause, as would be normal for any relative clause:
who polls say has the lowest approval rating [of] any second-term President


This, in turn, is inserted in:

President Bush is making adjustments to his Social Security proposal.

as a non-restrictive relative clause modifying "Pres. Bush":

President Bush, who polls say has the lowest approval rating [of] any
second-term President,  is making adjustments to his Social Security
proposal.

I would call this a non-restrictive relative (adjective) clause.

***************************************************
Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, Cal Poly State University
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. 805-756-2184 ~ Dept. phone 805-756-2596
Dept. fax: 805-756-6374 ~  E-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
***************************************************

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/