Hi teachers,
I would like to ask,
Where should I put ‘missing relative pronoun’ in the following sentence? And which one should be used - ‘who/which/that’?
'The really important point is that because he did not invite the one man he certainly should have asked his father was angry.'
This sentence is from ‘Swan’ at section 515.3.
Thank you!
Last edited by dawnngcm; 25-Oct-2011 at 15:35.
[QUOTE=dawnngcm;815437]
Where should I put ‘missing relative pronoun’ in the following sentence? And which one ‘who/which/that’?
'The really important point is that because he did not invite the one man he certainly should have asked his father was angry.'
NOT A TEACHER
(1) I know that you are going to get some really interesting answers from the teachers.
(2) As for me, I wish to speak and write "perfect" English, so I should write:
... because he did not invite the one man whom he should have asked, his father
was angry.
(3) I think that some experts would allow (or even prefer) "that."
(4) "Who" is, of course, ridiculous.
(5) "Which" might be acceptable in some Englishes, but hopefully not in American English.
NOT A TEACHER
(1) Teacher Fivejedjon has pointed out something very important for us learners who
want to punctuate correctly.
(a) The ideal punctuation of Member Dawnngcm's sentence should be:
The really important point is that, because he did not invite the one man whom/ that he certainly should have asked, his father was angry.
Compare:
The really important point is that his father was angry because he did not invite the one man whom /that he certainly should have asked. (Most books tell us that a comma is usually not necessary if the adverbial clause is at the end.)
In the first sentence, we use two commas. They indicate that if we wanted to, we
could delete (erase) the words between them (the adverbial clause of reason) and still
have a grammatically correct sentence:
The really important point is that his father was angry.
Thanks teacher fivejedjon and TheParser.
I got your point, the commas are important. The sentence meaning is expressed more clearly than without them. But,
Is the sentence still with the same meaning and grammatically correct if the commas haven’t put?
There is no visible punctuation in speech; it is grammatically correct as a spoken utterance.
I do not consider it acceptable in writing.