[Grammar] [noun] [dependent clause] [noun clause] Whoever thought of the idea is a genius.

[hhtt21]

I started to confuse basics/fundamentals. Would you please help me with this? From the link:

A noun clause is a dependent clause that acts as a noun.
"Whoever thought of the idea is a genius".

I can't see the rule, point or whatever it is in that what makes "whoever thought of the idea" a noun? What is the relevance between "whoever thought of the idea" and "noun" in the example above?

https://www.k12reader.com/term/noun-clause/#:~:text=A noun clause is a,or objects of a preposition.

 

[emsr2d2]

In that sentence, "Whoever thought of that" is treated as a single noun. Compare it with "Tom is a genius". Clearly, in that sentence "Tom" is a [proper] noun. "Whoever thought of that" has the same function in the original sentence, because the speaker doesn't know who thought of "that".

 

[PaulMatthews]

I started to confuse basics/fundamentals. Would you please help me with this? From the link:

A noun clause is a dependent clause that acts as a noun.
"Whoever thought of the idea is a genius".

I can't see the rule, point or whatever it is in that what makes "whoever thought of the idea" a noun? What is the relevance between "whoever thought of the idea" and "noun" in the example above?

https://www.k12reader.com/term/noun-clause/#:~:text=A noun clause is a,or objects of a preposition.

[Whoever thought of the idea] is a genius.

It's not a noun clause, not a clause at all. The bracketed element is a noun phrase in a 'fused' relative construction.

The pronoun "whoever" functions simultaneously as head of the whole NP and relativised element in the relative clause -- hence the term 'fused'.

The phrase can be paraphrased as "the person x satisfying the description 'x thought of the idea' ", with the implicature that I don't know who it was.

Incidentally, I would strongly recommend dropping the term 'noun clause'. The classification of finite subordinate clauses is based on their internal form rather than spurious analogies with the parts of speech.

 

[Phaedrus]

[Whoever thought of the idea] is a genius.

It's not a noun clause, not a clause at all.

Phrases like that are commonly termed clauses: free relative clauses. That whoever thought of the idea should be considered a clause is not surprising, since it consists of no more and no less than a subject noun phrase (whoever) and a predicate verb phrase (thought of the idea). No one would dream of not calling He thought of the idea a clause.

 

[jutfrank]

It certainly makes sense to an EFL teacher to call it a clause. We call such things 'wh-clauses', (as Phaedrus says, the 'wh' word is a subject with a predicate) and we have pedagogical reasons for doing so.

It also makes sense to think of these 'wh'-clauses as noun phrases in that in their function as sentential subjects, they are arguments of predication denoting some 'thing'. So I can't see what's wrong with calling them 'noun clauses', which is exactly what a lot of pedagogical grammars do.

 

[PaulMatthews]

It certainly makes sense to an EFL teacher to call it a clause. We call such things 'wh-clauses', (as Phaedrus says, the 'wh' word is a subject with a predicate) and we have pedagogical reasons for doing so.

It also makes sense to think of these 'wh'-clauses as noun phrases in that in their function as sentential subjects, they are arguments of predication denoting some 'thing'. So I can't see what's wrong with calling them 'noun clauses', which is exactly what a lot of pedagogical grammars do.

No it doesn’t make sense to call them clauses; quite the opposite in fact. The complex form “whoever”, for example, is not comparable to a simple form functioning as subject with a predicate, as in “He thought of the idea.” The -ever in “whoever” marks a phrase as non-referential, i.e. there is no reference to any particular person; it can be glossed as “the person who”, where a head + relativised element structure becomes apparent.

Put simply, the fused relative “whoever thought of the idea” in [1] is comparable to that of the non-fused relative in [2]:

[1] Whoever thought of the idea is a genius.
[2] The person who thought of the idea is a genius.

There are sound reasons for analysing fused relatives as NPs, not clauses. For example, fused relatives can occur in interrogatives with subject-auxiliary inversion, which differentiates them from clauses:

[3] Whoever thought of the idea is a genius.
[4] Is whoever thought of the idea a genius?

Further, fused relatives (simple or complex) occur in a wide range of functions that ordinary NPs take, such as subject, object and predicative complement:

Whoever is responsible must pay for the damage. [subject]
My parents criticise whomever I bring home. [direct object]
Let’s give whoever thought of the idea a second chance. [indirect object
His ideas aren’t what they seem to be. [subjective predicative comp]
I was embarrassed by what he said. [comp of preposition]

 

[5jj]

No it doesn’t make sense to call them clauses; quite the opposite in fact. The complex form “whoever”, for example, is not comparable to a simple form functioning as subject with a predicate, as in “He thought of the idea.” The -ever in “whoever” marks a phrase as non-referential, i.e. there is no reference to any particular person; it can be glossed as “the person who”, where a head + relativised element structure becomes apparent.

Put simply, the fused relative “whoever thought of the idea” in [1] is comparable to that of the non-fused relative in [2]:

[1] Whoever thought of the idea is a genius.
[2] The person who thought of the idea is a genius.]

You may not agree with calling such things clauses, but, as jutfrank said, "It certainly makes sense to an EFL teacher to call it a clause. We call such things 'wh-clauses', (as Phaedrus says, the 'wh' word is a subject with a predicate) and we have pedagogical reasons for doing so". (My emphasis added.)

In sentence (1), Whoever is, or contains within itself, the subject of the finite verb thought in the clause Whoever thought of the idea - In traditional grammar, a clause has its own subject and a finite verb, and is part of a larger sentence (Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar (1994 edn). Similarly, in sentence {2), who is the subject of the verb thought in the clause who thought of the idea.

In the world of TEFL, in which we are trying to enable learners to communicate rather than be masters of the latest terminology in the academic world, some traditional labels are more useful than later ideas.

 

[jutfrank]

The -ever in “whoever” marks a phrase as non-referential, i.e. there is no reference to any particular person; it can be glossed as “the person who”, where a head + relativised element structure becomes apparent.

Put simply, the fused relative “whoever thought of the idea” in [1] is comparable to that of the non-fused relative in [2]:

[1] Whoever thought of the idea is a genius.
[2] The person who thought of the idea is a genius.

Do you mean you think they're comparable in that neither has reference to any particular person? Or is it only [1] that you think is non-referential?

Whoever is responsible must pay for the damage. [subject]
My parents criticise whomever I bring home. [direct object]
Let’s give whoever thought of the idea a second chance. [indirect object
His ideas aren’t what they seem to be. [subjective predicative comp]
I was embarrassed by what he said. [comp of preposition]

Just to be clear: Do you also mean to say that none of these underlined phrases has reference? Or only the ones marked with -ever?

 

[PaulMatthews]

You may not agree with calling such things clauses, but, as jutfrank said, "It certainly makes sense to an EFL teacher to call it a clause. We call such things 'wh-clauses', (as Phaedrus says, the 'wh' word is a subject with a predicate) and we have pedagogical reasons for doing so". (My emphasis added.)

In sentence (1), Whoever is, or contains within itself, the subject of the finite verb thought in the clause Whoever thought of the idea - In traditional grammar, a clause has its own subject and a finite verb, and is part of a larger sentence (Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar (1994 edn). Similarly, in sentence {2), who is the subject of the verb thought in the clause who thought of the idea.

In the world of TEFL, in which we are trying to enable learners to communicate rather than be masters of the latest terminology in the academic world, some traditional labels are more useful than later ideas.

“Whoever” doesn’t have a subject-predicate structure.

Internally, the NP "whoever" consists of the head of the whole NP as well as the wh phrase at the beginning of a relative clause, and is comparable to the non-fused "the person who”

Externally, "whoever thought of the idea” behaves like an NP where it functions as subject of the verb “is”. The predicate of the sentence is "is a genius" in which the NP "a genius" is subjective predicative complement.

 

[TheParser]

NOT A TEACHER

1. Nowadays almost no American students study the Reed-Kellogg diagramming system.

a. If they did, they would have no problem in diagramming that sentence.

2. According to how I understand it, "Whoever" means "anyone who."

a. Thus, the basic sentence is "Anyone is a genius."

b. Of course, that sentence is not accurate (I, for example, am stupid).

c. So we must qualify "anyone" with the adjective clause "who thought of the idea."

3. I wish to emphasize, however, that many grammarians feel that it simpler and even more accurate to call "Whoever thought of the idea" a noun clause that is the subject of the verb "is."

My two main sources for these comments were (1) House and Harman, Descriptive English Grammar (1931), page 358. (2) Otto Jespersen, Essentials of English Grammar (1933), page 354. This respected grammarian is very definite in his view: He says that in regard to "Who steales [sic] my purse, steales trash" (Shakespeare), it "would not do to say that ... who stands for he who." He believes that "Who steales my purse" is a "clause" that is the subject of the sentence.

 

[emsr2d2]

In case of confusion, please note that when this thread was moved from Ask A Teacher to General Language Discussions, the original post #1 was somehow lost. The content of that post can be seen in the quote box in what is now post #2.

 

[GoesStation]

In case of confusion, please note that when this thread was moved from Ask A Teacher to General Language Discussions, the original post #1 was somehow lost. The content of that post can be seen in the quote box in what is now post #2.

I found the original post #1 and restored it to the beginning of this thread.

 

[Phaedrus]

1. Nowadays almost no American students study the Reed-Kellogg diagramming system.

a. If they did, they would have no problem in diagramming that sentence.

I have endeavored to construct a Reed–Kellogg diagram of the sentence Whoever thought of the idea is a genius (see one of the attached images) and should be grateful to TheParser if he would check its accuracy. My use of a clause-topped "pedestal" in subject position imitates the basic approach I find in Pence & Emery's diagram of I shall take whatever wage is offered me, where a clause-topped pedestal is used in direct-object position (A Grammar of Present-Day English, 2nd Ed., Macmillan, New York, 1947, p. 393).

Also attached is a tree diagram of the sentence, which may not be state-of-the-art, in that it depicts both the main subject DP (determiner phrase, subject of is a genius) and the NP (noun phrase), which the main subject DP contains, as having null heads. The free relative clause, whoever thought of the idea, is represented as a relative clause (complementizer phrase) modifier of the null-headed NP. It is also represented as involving wh-movement of the the subject DP of the TP (tense phrase, or sentence) to Spec, CP. The use of wh-movement is incompatible with the headed structure advocated by PaulMatthews.

If the NP containing the free relative clause is headed—and I have read a persuasive, though dated, case for their headedness ("The Syntax of Free Relatives in English," by Joan Bresnan and Jane Grimshaw, 1978)—the diagram will need to be tweaked. The tree I have drawn conforms to a representation of free relatives that I learned in a syntax class on ellipsis when I asked a tangential question about free relatives. The professor who demonstrated it takes a Socratic approach to teaching. The fact that he did not utilize a "headed approach" may simply have been for the sake of convenience.

 

[TheParser]

View attachment 4055View attachment 4056

NOT A TEACHER

1. I think that you and I are about the only members who are interested in Reed-Kellogg.

2. I realize that most teachers think it is sheer madness to teach it to their students, even the advanced ones. I respectfully disagree, but who am I to gainsay my betters?

3. I thank you for your beautiful diagram. It perfectly shows how that sentence should be diagrammed if one believes the words "Whoever thought of the idea" is a noun clause that serves as the subject of the sentence.

4. If I am not mistaken (and I could easily be), House and Harman would diagram it differently (based on their diagram on page 358).

a. Of course, I am too computer illiterate to post what I think it would be.

Since you know Reed-Kellogg, maybe all that I have to say is the following: Diagram "whoever [which means "who" in their diagram] thought of the idea" as an adjective clause that modifies the sentence "X is a genius." ("X" is the implied antecedent "anyone.") In other words, diagram it as "Anyone who thought of the idea is a genius."

 

[Phaedrus]

1. I think that you and I are about the only members who are interested in Reed-Kellogg.

It was from you, in a different online aspect (on a different forum), that I learned of the existence of the Reed-Kellogg system long ago. Subsequently, I found out that my parents had been taught, in the 1950s and 1960s, how to diagram sentences using that method, which, sadly, did not form part of my "grammar school" education in California, in the late 1980s, when hardly any grammar at all was taught to us native-speaking youngsters.

Recently I have tried to pick up the system, but I have tried to swallow it whole rather than learn it piecemeal in a disciplined fashion. (The level of detail it depicts is somewhat restricted relative to Chomskyan generative syntax, which I have taken several courses in at the university.) Already I have used the Reed-Kellogg system in an advanced-low ESL composition class that I teach, but only to illustrate things like subject-verb agreement and relative-clause modification.

3. I thank you for your beautiful diagram. It perfectly shows how that sentence should be diagrammed if one believes the words "Whoever thought of the idea" is a noun clause that serves as the subject of the sentence.

4. If I am not mistaken (and I could easily be), House and Harman would diagram it differently (based on their diagram on page 358). [. . .]

Since you know Reed-Kellogg, maybe all that I have to say is the following: Diagram "whoever [which means "who" in their diagram] thought of the idea" as an adjective clause that modifies the sentence "X is a genius." ("X" is the implied antecedent "anyone.") In other words, diagram it as "Anyone who thought of the idea is a genius."

This is fascinating. Thank you for giving that reference again, which I have now checked. I am amazed to discover that Pence and Emery, using the same diagramming system that House and Harman used (namely, the Reed-Kellogg system), diagram what I call free relative clauses in an entirely different way. It is not just for the sentence I shall take whatever wage is offered me that Pence and Emery use the clause-topped pedestal structure. They likewise diagram the word-string whoever asks for it in indirect-object position in the sentence We will make whoever asks for it a quotation for the whole job using that structure (see p. 399, 2nd Ed.).

I have attached a new diagram, using House and Harman's approach (again, within the Reed-Kellogg diagramming system). I find it interesting that they say that the indefinite relative pronouns in such structures have "unexpressed antecedents" (p. 357), which they also describe as "understood" (ibid.). It is as though they are building in a level of logical structure within the Reed-Kellogg diagrams -- in which there is a relative-clause modifier of "X" -- whereas Pence and Emery represent such free relatives (or syntactic entities) simply as clausal subjects or objects.

 

[jutfrank]

According to how I understand it, "Whoever" means "anyone who."

a. Thus, the basic sentence is "Anyone is a genius."

Hello, The Parser.

With respect, that's the wrong interpretation. The original sentence is equivalent to: The person who thought of that idea is a genius.

That means that somebody (one specific person) did think of the idea. The use of whoever shows that the speaker doesn't know who that person is.

I realize that most teachers think it is sheer madness to teach it to their students, even the advanced ones. I respectfully disagree, but who am I to gainsay my betters?

Let's all remember that teachers have quite different reasons for saying things, and ways of explaining things, from linguists because their aims are quite different. And the aims of EFL teachers like myself are quite different again from those of a teacher whose students are mainly native speakers.

As a Brit, I was surprised to learn that teachers would teach any way of diagramming sentences to their students. That doesn't happen in Britain, and I don't think it ever has, to my knowledge.

Just to satisfy my curiosity, would you tell me whether this still goes on in the US? Are you talking about high school? At what age might students expect to be introduced to sentence diagramming?

 

[GoesStation]

As a Brit, I was surprised to learn that teachers would teach any way of diagramming sentences to their students. That doesn't happen in Britain, and I don't think it ever has, to my knowledge.

Just to satisfy my curiosity, would you tell me whether this still goes on in the US? Are you talking about high school? At what age might students expect to be introduced to sentence diagramming?

I don't know whether it's still taught, but I was subjected to sentence diagramming in the seventh grade (age 12 or 13) and at least one other time, which was probably a year or two later. I just had a conversation about this with a friend who's a retired teacher who ran a combined 5th and 6th grade class for years. I'm sure she never taught it, but she had very fond memories of doing diagramming as a girl.

The one thing I remember distinctly about my instruction is that nobody ever gave the slightest suggestion as to its purpose.

 

[5jj]

As a Brit, I was surprised to learn that teachers would teach any way of diagramming sentences to their students. That doesn't happen in Britain, and I don't think it ever has, to my knowledge.

I didn't diagram sentences, but I did draw columns. These examples of exercise instructions are from Wood, FT (1954), The Groundwork of English Grammar. London: Macmillan.

(p 34) Draw five columns in your exercise books and label them as follows: Subject, Enlargement of Subject, Verb, Object, Enlargement of Object. Then analyse the following sentences. (N.B. Some of the sentences may not contain all five parts.)

(p43) Analyse the following sentences into Subject, Enlargement of Subject, Verb, Enlargement of verb, Object, Enlargement of Object.

(p 47) Draw three columns in your exercise book. In the first column enter the Verb from each of the following sentences, in the second column the Direct Object and in the third column the Indirect Object. Head the columns accordingly. (N.B. It may be that in some sentences there is nothing to enter in one or more of the columns. In that case, put a dash.)

(p 64) Make four columns in your exercise book and head them Verb, Object, Complement, Transitive or Intransitive; then study the following sentences. In the first column enter the verb of each sentence (if it consists of more than one word, make sure you enter the full verb and not merely part of it). If it has an object or a complement, enter it in the appropriate column. If there is neither object nor complement, then put a dash in columns 2 and 3. In column 4 state whether the verb is transitive or intransitive.

Oh what fun we had in those days.

 

[TheParser]

The original sentence is equivalent to: The person who thought of that idea is a genius.



Just to satisfy my curiosity, would you tell me whether this still goes on in the US?

1. Yes, that is what I tried to explain in post #14. (Kindly study Phaedrus's diagram in post #15.)

2. Oh. no! Most teachers have no idea what Reed-Kellogg is. If they attended university linguistics classes, they would know about tree diagrams. But I doubt that any teachers use diagramming.

 

[Phaedrus]

The one thing I remember distinctly about my instruction is that nobody ever gave the slightest suggestion as to its purpose.

I have a few quotations to share about this. The first one is from Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg themselves:

"When we write the different parts of a sentence over the lines that stand for those parts, we say that we have diagramed the sentence.

DEFINITION.—A Diagram is a picture of the offices and relations of the different parts of a sentence."

- Reed & Kellogg. Graded Lessons in English: An Elementary English Grammar Consisting of One Hundred Practical Lessons, Carefully Graded and Adapted to the Class-Room, p. 16. Effingham Maynard & Co., 1892.

Reed and Kellogg give the same definition of a diagram, word for word, in their Higher Lessons in English: A Work On English Grammar and Composition In Which the Science of the Language Is Made Tributary to the Art of Expression (Charles E. Merrill Co., 1909, p. 21). The next quote is from House and Harman:

"A diagram of a sentence is a graphic representation of the sentence, picturing the interrelations of its parts. It is used by the grammarian in much the same way as perpendicular and parallel lines, triangles, and circles are used by the mathematician. The diagram records and objectifies the constituent parts, or elements, of the sentence. It is exceptionally useful to both the student and the teacher in explaining the basic structure of a given sentence. It can, however, only approximate the complete analysis, and should be supplemented by parsing (oral or written) and explanatory annotations" (p. 203).

- House, Homer C., and Susan Emolyn Harman. Descriptive English Grammar. Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1931 & 1950.[/QUOTE]

The last quotation I have to offer about the purpose of sentence diagraming is from Pence and Emery:

"A diagram for grammatical analysis is . . . nothing more than a map or chart that makes a subject easier to grasp in its entirety. A diagram in grammar bears about the same relationship to grammar that a map bears to geography, that a drawing of a piece of apparatus in a laboratory manual bears to chemistry, that a chart bears to some aspect of economics in a treatise on that subject. A diagram is ever a means of giving pictorial representation to analysis and is never an end in itself. Because it can reveal to the eye in one glance what the process of analysis is discovering, a diagram can have as much usefulness in the study of grammar as in the study of any other subject where analysis plays a leading role" (pp. 369-370).

- Pence, R. W., and D. W. Emery. A Grammar of Present-Day English. Macmillan Co., 1947 & 1963.