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I am new here. I dont know how to use it.
I am teaching Syntax and I have some problems to differentiate Nominal Relative Clauses and Wh-Interrogative Clause. I am wondering if some of you could help me with these examples.
Do you remember when Columbus discovered America?
Do you remember when we first came here, darling?
What caused the fire remains a mystery.
We never discovered what caused the fire.
Thanks beforehand.
The difference between relative clauses and embedded question complement wh-clauses
can be very tricky to identify.
For example,
Relatives and questions use almost the same set of wh-words.
There are some differences, though.
For one thing, whether, how, and what can never be used as relative pronouns:
why is severely restricted in what nouns it may modify as a relative pronoun; basically only reason:
These restrictions on wh-words contribute to the frequency of that in relative clauses,
since that can be used instead of any wh-word, and is not restricted like wh-words are.
Complements, on the other hand, are clauses used as nouns,
while relatives are clauses used as adjectives, to modify nouns.
I.e, complement clauses can be the subject or the object of
clauses that have the appropriate (complement-taking) predicates.
The first, second, and fourth original sentences contain direct object complement clauses,
governed by the respective transitive predicates remember, remember, and discover.
The third original sentence contains a subject complement clause,
governed by the complex predicate remains a mystery.
(This predicate, btw, has already been done some things to;
for more details than you need on that subject, see here.)
That's enough to be going on with for a while.
reason(a) and reason(b) and ... Whereas Disjunctive clauses are unknown rather than presupposed, which is why I think you wanted to call them questions -- reason(a) or reason(b) or .... But whether they're one or the other is, as Ross shows, a very complex matter, dependent on a number of factors, most having to do with the matrix predicate, as befits a governed cyclic rule.
Try to identify the subject, predicator and object of each sentence.
If a whole (relative clause) immediately precedes/follows the [predicator], i.e. the main verb, it is the subject/object of the sentence; hence, a nominal relative clause.
E.g.: Do you [remember] (when Columbus discovered America)?
(What caused the fire) [remains] a mystery.
If a (relative clause) follows a {noun phrase}, it is a post-modifying dependent relative clause.
E.g.: That was {the time} (when Columbus discovered America).
{He} (who shall not be named) is here.
You can usually tell the difference by the amount of stress that the wh-word carries. If it carries stress, it's likely to be interrogative. If not, it's likely to be relative.
If this doesn't work, you can try to rephrase. If you can rephrase so the we-word becomes a top level interrogative, it's likely an interrogative in the original clause. If you can rewrite so the wh-word has a head, it's a nominal relative clause
Do you remember when Columbus discovered America? ->
When did Columbus discover America? Do you remember? - Interrogative
Do you remember the time when Columbus discovered America? - Relative (not likely unless you're very old)Do you remember when we first came here, darling? ->
When did we first come here, darling? Do you remember? - Interrogative
Do you remember the time when we first came here, darling? - RelativeWhat caused the fire remains a mystery. ->
What caused the fire? That remains a mystery. - Interrogative, you still don't know what caused the fire.
The thing that caused the fire remains a mystery. - Relative, you know what caused the fire, and that thing is a mystery.We never discovered what caused the fire. ->
What caused the fire? We never discovered that. - Interrogative
We never discovered the thing that caused the fire. - Relative
In the last case, the semantic difference is very small, since discovering an object is somewhat synonymous to discovering what that object is.
The difficulty of analysis is specific to English. Many other languages use different words for the two usages, e.g. German: when = wann/wenn, Spanish, what = qué/lo que.
