Besides, who are you that you should be setting a price upon your friendship?

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AlJapone

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Besides, who are you that you should be setting a price upon your friendship?
A sentence from On Friendship by A. Clutton-Brock

Dear Sirs.

I do not know what to make of 'that' in the above sentence. Please give me some advice to analyze this construction.

Best wishes,


AlJapone
 

Frank Antonson

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That's a good one.

My first thought is that "that" is a relative pronoun and the subject in the adjective clause with the second "you" as an appositive. The first "you" is the antecedent to the "that". But I am not sure that that explains the sentence. I willing happily read other suggestions.
 

AlJapone

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Hello,

Even if it is possible to paraphrase our sentence as follows:
Besides, who are you if you should be you setting a price upon your friendship?
I believe there still remains a problem: that relating the complement in sub-clause to the subject in main-clause.
Or is it that "who" is the subject in the original sentence and you, complement; so there is no problem?


Best wishes,


AlJapone
 
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abaka

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It seems a bit more complex than an apposition on "you".

There are many sentences that follow this pattern:

What is man, that thou art mindful of him. (Psalm 8:4 -- thou art = you are)

On this day when we hear His voice let us not harden our hearts, but let us give our hearts and bodies to Him, and our lives to Him, that we may live in peace in this world...

The two religious quotations reflect that the pattern is really quite literary, even high, style.

I would say it's an adverbial clause (perhaps an adverb of manner -- answers the question "how") -- modifying the entire sentence before it -- or, I suppose, the verb if you must so insist. You may think of there being an omitted "such" before "that".

There is a nice correspondence to this in formal logic. The grammatical subject and complements ("x", "y") and the verb ("P") correspond to a predicate P(x,y).

Then the constuction really is as follows:

P(x,y). How P(x,y)? P(x,y) such that Q(z).

Who are you? Who are you, such that you should be setting a price upon your friendship?

I realize my suggestion is quite complicated, but it does apply equally to the similar sentences above, where an apposition is not really apparent.

頑張った.
 
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AlJapone

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Dear Sirs.

I retract my opinion stated in my second post. As always, Google helped me.

who are you that you should not believe in fairy tales?
Who are you that you should say these things to us?
Who are you that you plant your seeds of destruction?
who are you that you are afraid of man who dies,
Who are you that you should find fault with the servant of another?

I get an impression from these examples that 'that' functions in them as a conjunction introducing a clause that restrictively describes a listner's caracteristics, probably regrettable ones; the listner or listners may well be actual or potential.

I am not sure about to which definition out of many that dictionaries offer these examples match.

Best wishes.


AlJapone

Ohazukashii kagiridesu
 

Frank Antonson

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This is an interesting thread, and I will have to take more time to think about it, but I wanted to point out that the construction does not have to be regrettable or negative, e.g.

Who is she, that she can be so breathtakingly beautiful? Venus?
 

AlJapone

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This is an interesting thread, and I will have to take more time to think about it, but I wanted to point out that the construction does not have to be regrettable or negative, e.g.

Who is she, that she can be so breathtakingly beautiful? Venus?

Apparantly the speaker has someone in mind when she/he asks, "who are you that ...?" I imagine one of motivations behind this retrical expression might be the speaker's indignation, or at best unwillingness to believe what is going on between him/her and the listner(s); hence, the that clause coincidentaly describes negative caracteristics more often than not.
When the subject is the third person, this may tend not to be the case for a variety of reason.

By the way, is this Arthur Clutton-Brock famous in english speaking countries? I found his essay Sunday Before The War very beutiful, almost mesmerising notwithstanding my poor English comprehension abilities. I would like to know your opinion if it were not much trouble for you. It's quite a short essay.
An Essay by A. Clutton-Brock, "Sunday Before The War."

Best wishes


AlJapone
 
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Frank Antonson

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It still does not have to be indignant just because it is in the third person. It can be worshipful, e.g.

Who are you that you can so understand this sentence's syntax?
 

AlJapone

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It still does not have to be indignant just because it is in the third person. It can be worshipful, e.g.

Who are you that you can so understand this sentence's syntax?

Hello, Antonson.

I guess I was wrong there. Even though most of what came up when I googled had two traits in common: the modal should and negative tone, I admit several results from my cursorily searching cannot be called proof in any way for some veracity of my impression; in fact, if you did not tell me that your example is an expression of worship, I would consider it ironical, or even imagine that the speaker realised at that point he had been decieved, i.e. you are not what you have tried to make me to believe as what you are. With this kind of prejudice I could have never hoped to reach understanding of the construction, I thank you for your lucid illustration.

Best wishes.


AlJapone
 

abaka

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The word "that" is not always a relative pronoun equivalent to some other (pro)noun, explicit or implied.

Its English usage is considerably more complex.

We eat, that we might live.

Would that it were, that the other could be.


In both of these the subordinate non-restrictive that-clause is very similar to the ones in the "who is X, that..." construction: similar enough that ( :-D ) I think a single analysis should be made. In which case, the that-clause is clearly adverbial.

Note the one thing such that-clauses often have in common: their verb is subjunctive, or modally augmented, implying irreality, here one of purpose. (I said manner earlier. That was a mistake.)
 

AlJapone

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The word "that" is not always a relative pronoun equivalent to some other (pro)noun, explicit or implied.

Its English usage is considerably more complex.

We eat, that we might live.

Would that it were, that the other could be.


In both of these the subordinate non-restrictive that-clause is very similar to the ones in the "who is X, that..." construction: similar enough that ( :-D ) I think a single analysis should be made. In which case, the that-clause is clearly adverbial.

Note the one thing such that-clauses often have in common: their verb is subjunctive, or modally augmented, implying irreality, here one of purpose. (I said manner earlier. That was a mistake.)

I think it could be considered the absolute construction with some unstated, yet understood elements, such as 'wishing,' preceding the conjunction that when the that-clause is separated by a comma.


I quote a part of the definition of that by Oxford online dictionary.

conjunction
1 introducing a subordinate clause
[usually with modal] expressing a purpose, hope, or intention:
we pray that the coming year may be a year of peace
I eat that I may live

The last of its examples has no comma. Interesting.

Best wishes,


AlJapone
 

abaka

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Absolutely not. An absolute construction can not have a finite verb.

All things being equal, gold is more precious than silver.

That said, I still think she's the one I want to marry.

Their children at last in bed, they discussed their impending divorce.

Who are you, that veil over your head?
 

AlJapone

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"Absolutely not."

Dear abaka,

It looks like I have to take back my words again. I misunderstood about the construction, or, rather, didn't put enough effort, in the first place, nessesary to understand it; ashamed! I am thankful for your taking the time to bother yourself to correct my ignorance.
I wrongly thought the main verb used as non-finite, like the unstated 'wishing' in my example, was enough to call it the absolute construction. I should not have smattered.
Let me repeat, thank you so much, abaka.

Best wishes,


AlJapone

Now after rereading my last post, 'wishing' was impertinant to my argument, maybe something like 'our wish being' might have be more apt. Of course this doesn't change the fact I misunderstood about the absolute.
 

abaka

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^Please don't apologize so much. I dare say many of us "natives" would be worse at most of the languages the "learners" speak than any of the learners are at English (my attempts at 日本語 being particularly bad). I made an automatic pun on the word "absolute" (as in construction) but it probably came across as plain rudeness. :)
 

AlJapone

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^Please don't apologize so much. I dare say many of us "natives" would be worse at most of the languages the "learners" speak than any of the learners are at English (my attempts at ??? being particularly bad). I made an automatic pun on the word "absolute" (as in construction) but it probably came across as plain rudeness. :)

No, in fact, I had realised it was a pun, and originaly, I intended to put a smiley after your quote; however, I thought better of it because it occured to me that it might not be quite civil for someone who had commited a mistake due to his lazyness to employ a jocular tone in his reply written to convey his gratitude. So I just removed the smily before posting my last message, which might have produced some incongruity in tone that I failed to notice. So it would be my fault rather than yours if there were any; in any case, please do not give it any more thought. Thank you. :)

Best wishes,


AlJapone
 
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Frank Antonson

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I am a little puzzled by some of your comments -- or, perhaps too lazy to think deeply about them; but I would like to contribute the idea that "that" can be short for "so that", in which case (at least in American terms) it would be a subordinating conjunction. Such is not the case in the original post.
 

AlJapone

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I am a little puzzled by some of your comments -- or, perhaps too lazy to think deeply about them; but I would like to contribute the idea that "that" can be short for "so that", in which case (at least in American terms) it would be a subordinating conjunction. Such is not the case in the original post.

I agree with you. It is one of my reasons for my mention of the absolute. To be explicit, I thought that the original example should not be grouped together with abaka's examples.

At the moment, I suspect that the original is based on no grammatical grounds, rather it is based on the prestige of the Bible; where you will find many similar examples. If that is the case, it would be pointless to try to analyse it.
However, I know nothing about the history of English translations of the Bible, so this is just my "uneducated" guess. I'm lazy again! ;-)

Al
 

AlJapone

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abaka said:
... Who are you, such that you should be setting a price upon your friendship? ...
This is the correct answer, to my mind.

MrP
Hello MrPedantic,
I am not sure whether you are talking about abaka's interpretation or abaka's view on syntactic structure.
Is it right to think you mean that the construction used in the original is an accepted syntactic variation of a construction using ",such that" as in the above quote?

Best wishes,


AlJapone
 

Frank Antonson

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I believe that we are down to nuances.

The sentence could be interpreted various ways.
 
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