nomadicxistence wrote:
I understand that ",... a giant fungus" is a relative clause, but since every clause has a subject and a verb, what is the corresponding verb for the subject "a giant fungus" here?
Hi nomadexistence,
Thanks for posting your doubt here.
Let's take a look at all the Subject- Verb (SV pairs) in this sentence:
Scientists have recently discovered what could be the largest and oldest living organism on Earth, a giant fungus that is an interwoven filigree of mushrooms and rootlike tentacles spawned by a single fertilized spore some 10,000 years ago and extending for more than 30 acres in the soil of a Michigan forest.
Cl 1:
Scientists have recently
discoveredCl 2:
what could be the largest and oldest living organism on Earth, a giant fungus
Cl 3:
that is an interwoven filigree of mushrooms and rootlike tentacles
Cont. of Cl 2: spawned by a single fertilized spore some 10,000 years ago and extending for more than 30 acres in the soil of a Michigan forest.
Now here the Cl 1 is an Independent Clause (IC), and Cl 2 is a Dependent Clause (DC). Both are correctly connected and form an IC together. Now Cl 3 is again a DC, a Relative Clause modifier that gives us some information about "a giant fungus". So if we discard that modifier, this part of the sentence will read "a giant fungus spawned by... and extending for....". So here we have a Noun + Noun Modifier where "a giant fungus" is a Noun and the rest of the part is a Noun Modifier.
Now if you add a verb for "a giant fungus", it will create an IC and in that case we will have two ICs joined together by just a comma between Earth and a giant fungus. This will certainly lead to an error. Noun + Noun Modifiers are not made of clauses.
And yes. do read those Articles suggested by the poster above my post.
Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha
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