Talk:Dependent clause

message: "basti ka hasti bro, not the structure of the clause itself.  I think that misleading statement should be removed, but as I see there have been some wars over this article already I'd sooner leave that to a more experienced editor.
Digitig (talk) 14:17, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

message: "He saw Mary when he was in New York" and "They studied hard because they had a test" are both examples of adverb clauses.
This could cause some confusion. Wouldn't it be better to say they are both examples CONTAINING adverb clauses?
89.102.4.222 17:13, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adverb clauses 

message: As the discussion between Torc2 and me (Hans Adler) took a lot of space (my fault, I admit) without getting us closer to a resolution, it's probably best to start again in a new section, with a new format.
*For clarity and easy reference I will rephrase my position concerning the content of the article here. Perhaps Torc2 will do the same later.
*#The article Dependent clause contains thinly disguised advice (contrary to WP:NOT#GUIDE),
*#which I was surprised to find in an encyclopedia entry on a linguistic term. See WP:NOT#DICT.
*#The section on "Fragments", in the state in which I found it, was particularly problematic
*#because it gave advice in imperative form, saying: "Avoid creating a sentence fragment."
*#As it did not give any context whatsoever, this was bad advice.
*#The next sentence tried to give a justification for this advice:
*#:A. "An adjective clause does not express a complete thought,
*#:B. so it cannot stand alone as a sentence."
*#Each of the following reasons would alone be enough to make this justification dubious:
*#:C. "Complete thought" is a dubious term because it looks like a technical term (and is often used as if it was one) but has no exact definition.
*#:D. It is easy to make up adjective clauses which do express a "complete thought" (for every plausible interpretation of these words). (Example: "Who had given birth to the cutest pups I have ever seen, and whose big, brown eyes now pleaded for another cookie".)
*#:E. It is easy to find examples of complete sentences in English literature which do not express a "complete thought" (again, for every plausible interpretation of these words). (Example: "When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation." Strunk and White (1918), Introduction.)
*#Since the justification is controversial, it amounts to original research. So it breaks WP:NOR.
*#Advice like this is often labelled as "prescriptionist." The term has a neutral meaning, discussed in the article on linguistic_prescription. But it is often used in a derogatory way, as can be seen in a historical version of the same article. Professional linguists in English-speaking countries seem to have a tendency in this direction, because there is a long history of books like Strunk and White (1918) which are based on incorrect assumptions and incorrect observations. (And which fail to follow their own advice, because apparently it is not meant literally.) Following WP:OR (not a policy) would favour the experts' opinions in such a case.
*#As there are two factions with opposing opinions, the article should reflect this (WP:NPOV).
:::::--Hans Adler (talk) 14:51, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Avoid prescribing..., Part II 

message: The punctuation section refers to "essential" and "non-essential" dependent clauses. Other readers are likely to recognize the distinction as "restrictive" and "non-restrictive" when describing the rule for using "that" or ", which" to set off a clause.  Fowler also uses "defining" and "non-defining".
The different choices might be regionalisms or nationalisms, and we are not specifying a particular English as the target of this article's discussion, so we can afford to be inclusive and accommodating.
Would it, therefore, make sense to add a parenthetical mention of "restrictive/defining versus non-restrictive/non-defining", so that all the commonly used pairings are available in the the one place where they are needed (this article)?
Kevinmcl (talk) 17:51, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Are "essential" and "non-essential" the only correct terms here? 

message: Under the heading "Noun clause", in the first sentence "....in the same way as a noun, adjective, verb, or pronoun",
should the word "verb" be "adverb" instead?
202.130.125.102 (talk) 01:58, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should it be "adverb" ? 

message: If we could recruit enough wikipedians from other countries (especially people who speak a non-Indoeuropean language), we might expand this article to cover other languages. If you have contact to e.g. Finnish, Turkish, Japanese, etc. wikipedians or are yourself one, have a look at this article and see if other languages have comparable structures. Trigaranus (talk) 18:24, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other languages 

message: There are no examples in the section of a noun clause as an ADJ or V.  I can't think of any.
Wikinetman (talk) 16:18, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why does it say a noun clause "can be used in the same way as a noun, adjective, verb, or pronoun"? 

message: In addition to some small edits, I have removed this sentence:
:A dependent clause is usually attached to an independent clause.
Please give one example of where it is not. In fact, the statement before this sentence contradicts this statement unless there exists a third class of clauses:
:Dependent clauses cannot stand alone as a sentence.
I believe that in such cases, it would be grammatically incorrect. Furthermore, I have integrated the sentence, minus the misleading usually, into the surrounding sentences to be more concise.
-- 124.150.94.103 (talk) 18:45, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "usually" attached. 

message: Here’s one.
I suggest you leave the building.
In fact, the classification of clauses into dependent and independent, that given in the first lines of this article and most everywhere else, does not account for their use as subjects:
What Billy did shocked his friends.
or as the complements of transitive and linking verbs:
Billy’s friends didn’t know that he couldn’t swim.
Billy’s mistake was that he refused to take lessons.
The last three examples are taken from the DeAnza College website http://faculty.deanza.edu/flemingjohn/stories/storyReader$23 where too the clause relations are unaccounted for. The Internet Grammar of English website http://www.ucl.ac.uk/internet-grammar/clauses/xclau1.htm does better with a different classification.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.83.88.21 (talk) 23:45, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Please give one example..." 

message: In the introductory section of this article, it states "Some grammarians use the term subordinate clause to refer only to adverbial dependent clauses."  I haven't seen any proof of that.  Could someone (perhaps the person that contributed that sentence) explain the rationale behind it - or better yet: provide some references, preferably from such grammarians that consider subordinate and dependent different terms?  Thanks.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arryc (talk • contribs) 20:57, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dependent vs Subordinate 

message: I can't pinpoint when linguists coined "dependent clause" as a term that has largely supplanted "subordinate clause," but both terms stand in contrast to the notion of an "independent clause (formerly called a "main clause"). All of those terms rely on naïve assumptions about how we actually use language. Furthermore, traditional linguistic models that employ those terms either (1) routinely present simplistic examples that comport with a preferred outcome, or (2) generate anomalies and exceptions that eviscerate the terms' utility from a practical perspective. For example:
: "I got home at midnight. That's when my sister texted me with the news that mom had suffered a stroke and was in the hospital's ICU."
Under a traditional linguistic analysis -
:* "That's" constitutes a main/independent clause.
:* "when (i.e., a conjunction) my sister texted me with the news" and "that mom had suffered a stroke and was in the hospital's ICU" constitute dependent/subordinate clauses.
So far we can infer that innovators in the linguistic fraternity changed from using "main clause" to "independent clause" due to the lack of saliency in treating a clause like "That's" as somehow implying the main idea of a sentence. The linguistic problem with the parsing given above, however, is that it requires viewing "when" as a conjunction despite how "when" also can be construed as an adverb. Consider:
:* "That's when (i.e. an adverb)" constitutes an adverbial clause as a subcategory within the range of dependent/subordinate clauses.
:* "my sister texted me with the news" constitutes a main/independent clause.
:* "that mom had suffered a stroke and was in the hospital's ICU" constitutes a relative clause as a subcategory within the range of dependent/subordinate clauses - including "and" as a coordinating conjunction for the dependent clause, "was in the hospital's ICU." (Yet, it's NOT a true dependent clause because it lacks its own subject; it's a dependent phrase, which has no published definition to date, and doesn't merit one, for reasons implicit below.)
Thus we can infer how traditionalists in the linguistic fraternity are happy that "my sister texted me with the news" no longer has its dependent/subordinate status; however, does the clause - in a practical sense - convey the gist of the sentence it comprises? I don't think so.
For anyone who wants the long and short of what happened (i.e. based on texted information from my sister as I got home at midnight), it's that "mom had suffered a stroke and was in the hospital's ICU." That's the propositional clause (which has no published definition to date). The remainder of the sentence comprises adjunctive clauses despite how adjunctive clause has no published definition to date. 
Sadly, traditional linguistics tend to be stuck on traditional ways of trying to explain things despite well-founded disruptions to their inherited models. --Kent Dominic 15:28, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  The linguistic rabbit hole of the "dependent clause" (or "subordinate clause") gobbledygook 

message: In a sentence such as, I take it for granted that you've come here in search of knowledge, the "that you've come here in search of knowledge" clause qualifies as embedded and as dependent in the ordinary sense of those words as linguistically applied. Yet, labeling the clause as relative is meaningless for anyone who's unfamiliar with that linguistic term, and  labeling it as subordinate has a pejorative connotation for the uninitiated. Neither relative clause nor subordinate clause makes much sense  in other languages from a cross-linguistic perspective. For someone who's applying the ordinary meaning of main (i.e. chief; principal) and subordinate (i.e. placed in or occupying a lower class, rank, or position: INFERIOR), it's counterintuitive that "I take it for granted" qualifies as a main clause (rather than an expositive clause) while "you've come here in search of knowledge" qualifies as a subordinate clause (rather than a propositional clause). "Main clause," "relative clause," and "subordinate clause" need definition in the historical context of their archaic approaches to linguistic analysis but they have don't pass academic muster when used capriciously or casually in an article such as dependent clause. 
Another year, another rant. Anyone listening? Or care? Is there even one capable and enterprising editor out there,  or ? Since I'm fond of apophasis, I won't even mention how the "that" in I take it for granted that you've come here in search of knowledge has a hard time justifying its label as a pronoun, notwithstanding its traditional pedigree and despite the complementizer claimants' better knowledge (and egregiously complex terminology) that it's a conjunction. Why couldn't they call it a nominal conjunction that in fact - pardon the 17th century verbiage - relates in an anaphoric sense? They're still calling it a relative pronoun in the 21st century? Why? Beats me. It'd make sense if people today commonly said stuff like they used to say, "That you've come here in search of knowledge is what I take for granted."  -Kent Dominic·(talk) 11:06, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  linguistic rabbit hole, Part II