Frank Antonson
Senior Member
- Joined
- Dec 7, 2009
- Member Type
- English Teacher
- Native Language
- English
- Home Country
- United States
- Current Location
- United States
"Will you, nill you, I will marry you." The Taming of the Shrew
That's a cop out. ;-)
"(Whether) you want (or) you (do) not want (it), I will marry you." :tick:
No, that subject in the subordinate clause is not right. But I am not sure what to do about it.
I will have to think.
No, that subject in the subordinate clause is not right.
Will you" and "nill you" are definitely two separate subordinate clauses.
If you make the understood words to be "(If) Will you (it) (or) (if) nill you (it), the sentence is easy to diagram -- with compound adverbial clauses joined on a dashed line by "or". You could even consider the two clauses to be appositive noun clauses embedded in prepositional phrases -- "in the case (or condition) that you will it or in the case (or condition) that you nill it".
But, the last is pretty awkward.
In any case, the original 8 words are perfectly understandable to a native English speaker and, so, should be diagrammable.
Maybe not an understood word, but I think the idea of it is implied -- possibly by the reversed order.
I will wrack my brain for comparable examples.
Let's see, "You will, you nill, I will marry you" -- not quite the same. Reversed subject/predicate order in English suggests a question. Maybe that is how the "conditionality" of "if" or "whether" is arrived at.