Karl:

Could you tell me how you see the relation of "Polls say (that) who has
a rating" to what I would call the main clause -- "President Bush is
making adjustments. . ."?

MK 

-----Original Message-----
From: Karl Hagen [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2005 12:47 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Help with parsing

The relative clause is embedded inside the content clause, and 'who'
comes from the subject of the content clause. It's reasonably common for
the relative pronoun to originate inside an embedded clause like this.
Ignoring the modifiers of 'rating', a Reed-Kellogg would look something
like this (view in a fixed-font):


               (that)
               ------
                 .
                 .
           who | . has | rating
           ----+---------------
                 |
                 |
  polls | say | / \
-------+------------
        |

Karl Hagen
Department of English
Mount St. Mary's College


Kischner, Michael wrote:
>
> A colleague asked about this sentence:
>
>  "President Bush, who polls say has the lowest approval rating any 
> second-term President, is making adjustments to his Social Security 
> proposal."
>
> The "who" seems to introduce a relative (adjectival) clause, but that 
> "who" also seems to introduce the noun clause that's the direct object

> of "Polls say."  I guess the question is about the "Polls say" clause.
> I can't make a Reed-Kellogg diagram of it work.
>
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