Sentence Relatives: Showing Feeling, Interpreting Information
April 27, 2017
“The Big Lebowski” is an American movie that has developed a large following. Since its release in the late 1990s, the film has been shown at film festivals, colleges, and special events.
Many college students have spent evenings watching this film instead of doing their homework.
One famous quote from the movie is this:
"And even if he's a lazy man - and the 'Dude' was most certainly that, quite possibly the laziest in Los Angeles County, which would place him high in the runnin' for laziest worldwide."
NEW SCENE
You can learn a lot from this quote about a lazy man. You can learn about a common feature of everyday speech in America: the use of adjective clauses.
In today's report, we are going to explore how Americans use a type of adjective clause, sometimes called a sentence relative, in everyday speech.
What is a clause?
A clause is a group of words that has a subject and a predicate. It does not act as a sentence on its own; instead, it is part of a longer sentence.
One common type of clause is the relative clause. These clauses begin with relative pronouns such as that or which and act as adjectives in a sentence.
For example, consider the sentence "The book that my friend gave me is very boring."
In the sentence, the words "that my friend gave me" make up a relative clause that acts as an adjective for the noun, book.
Today, we are discussing how Americans use adjective clauses that begin with the word which. You will often hear speakers use these clauses to modify an entire idea, not just a noun.
Susan Conrad and Douglas Biber are English grammar experts. They say these special clauses that always use which are called sentence relatives.
If this sounds difficult to understand, don’t worry. We will give you many examples to clarify this point. Today we are going to show you two of the most common uses of sentence relatives.
Words in This Story
lazy – adj. not liking to work hard or to be active
clause – n. grammar : a part of a sentence that has its own subject and verb
predicate – n. grammar : the part of a sentence that expresses what is said about the subject
relative – adj. grammar : referring to a noun, a part of a sentence, or a sentence that was used earlier
pronoun – n. grammar : a word (such as I, he, she, you, it, we, or they) that is used instead of a noun or noun phrase
modify – v. grammar : to limit or describe the meaning of (a word or group of words)
interpret – v. to explain the meaning of (something)
academic – adj. usually used before a noun : of or relating to schools and education
NOTE: MOST INFORMATIONS
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