himanshu0123 wrote:
AndrewNA big fan of your detailed explanations and this was indeed very much helpful. Thanks a lot for your time for us.
just to clear some misunderstanding
In 1st sentence below. we see an independent clause starting with 'IT'.
''The rare bird which had been considered extinct for over fifty years'' this is a ''noun+relative pronoun construction'' will we call it a full clause parallel to the 2nd independent clause?
If I replace 'IT' with 'WHICH/THAT' will it still be an independent clause or an absolute phrase?
1. The rare bird which had been considered extinct for over fifty years, but it was actually thriving in a remote part of the Andes, has made a remarkable comeback over the past decade
Thank you for the kind words,
himanshu0123. If, in the sentence marked "1" above, we were to replace
it with
which, we would create nothing more than a branching
relative clause within an
overarching main (independent) clause.
The rare bird which had been considered extinct for over fifty years, but which was actually thriving in a remote part of the Andes, has made a remarkable comeback over the past decade.Note that either relative clause could function as a logical modifier on its own, either essential or non-essential (i.e. with double commas), although there would be no reason to keep
but.
1)
The rare bird which had been considered extinct for over fifty years has made a remarkable comeback over the past decade.2)
The rare bird which was actually thriving in a remote part of the Andes has made a remarkable comeback over the past decade.You can think of the two relative clauses together as
coordinate adjectives, those that modify the same noun and can be transposed without any real loss in meaning. To illustrate, notice that the following sentence is just as functional as the first, at the top of the post. I will add a comma after
bird out of preference.
The rare bird, which was actually thriving in a remote part of the Andes, but which had been considered extinct for over fifty years, has made a remarkable comeback over the past decade.We see coordinate adjectives more often as two single words (e.g.,
He led a long, prosperous life and
He led a prosperous, long life), but they can appear as phrases or even clauses, as we see in this question.
Perhaps the issue makes more sense now. Thank you for thinking to ask, and good luck with your studies.
- Andrew
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