An adjective clause with complex grammatical sutructures

Question

The following is a paragraph from an old book written many years ago by an English-language professor in China who himself is not a native speaker of English. I have questions about the grammar of one sentence in it and have marked the sentence red.

As you know very well, dictionaries are reference books-books not for continuous reading but for occasional consulting, but I would here advise you to read, from time to time, a page or two in The Concise Oxford Dictionary or The Pocket Oxford Dictionary. Each of these two dictionaries explains and illustrates fully and clearly the common words that one meets with every day but are entangled with other words in so many connexions that the idiomatic use and right understanding of them are far from easy. For example, "on" seems plain and simple enough, but few Chinese students can always use and understand it correctly. When I advise you to read the dictionary, I mean such common words as the prepositions, the conjuctions, the pronouns, and simple verbs and nouns like "get" and "put", "head" and "way".

The first question: Is there a missing "that" between "but" and "are"? If yes, is this word mandatory by grammar? Under which circumstances can it be omitted?

The second question: Is it legal to use "them" to reference the NP "the common words" from a lower clause?

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

The first question: Is there a missing "that" between "but" and "are"? Yes. If yes, is this word mandatory by grammar? Yes, here. Under which circumstances can it be omitted?-- When the structures are parallel, e.g. 'that one meets with... but cannot recognize'.

The second question: Is it legal to use "them" to reference the NP "the common words" from a lower clause? -- You cannot be arrested for this in any case, but 'yes', it is fine here.

Pkr · Answer

(1) Does "common words entangled with other words" contrast with "one meets with everyday" and thus justify using "but" instead of "and" here? Not to me.
I think there is no missing "that" here, because the stucture should read
the common words that (one meets.....but (and?) are...... ), just like
OED is the dictionary that (I use and is used by many people.)

(2) Why not?

Mister Micawber · Answer

1-- Yes. They are common, but they are entangled and therefore hard to understand, etc.
2-- I have explained in my previous post.

Anonymous · Answer

Mister, thank you much for your reply. Now I am thinking about your answers. For a "yes" to my first question, can I say that a "that" is missing, though mandatory by grammar, from the sentence segments:

(1a) "many songs that he likes but are not on the hit lists" and

(1b) "large-scale safety projects that everyone likes but are difficult to fund locally"?

What has concerned me about a "yes" answer to the second question is that I would then have to consider the sentence segment

(2a) "the common words that one meets with them every day"

grammatically legal although it contains an unnecessary "them". This is exactly what I see in the original adjective clause, wihch for the sake of discussion can be reduced to the following simplied form:

(2b) "... the common words that ... but are entagled ... that the idiomatic use of them is far from easy".

Here the word "them" tries to reference the NP "the common words" through the relative pronoun "that" it precedes, just as what happens in (2a).

Anonymous · Answer

pkr(1) Does "common words entangled with other words" contrast with "one meets with everyday" and thus justify using "but" instead of "and" here? Not to me.

I think there is no missing "that" here, because the stucture should read

the common words that (one meets..but (and?) are.. ), just like

OED is the dictionary that (I use and is used by many people.)

(2) Why not?

Thanks much! Just wonder how could it happen that I thought exactly the same about the word "but" when I first read the sentence. Later I realized that for "the common words" the author meant "on", "put", "head" and "way", the ones that are entangled with other words in nearly all possible ways, in contrast to another category of common words such as "sun", "star", "moon", etc. Still I am concerned with the use of the pronoun "them" in an clause that overlaps the functionality of the relative pronoun of the clause. I have stated this concern in my reply to Mister Micawber.

Mister Micawber · Answer

Frankly, I cannot work through all your analysis, but 1a and 1b are good, 2a is of course bad, and 2b is still find grammatically, as 'them' is the object of a preposition. Would you prefer that it read 'their idiomatic use and right understanding'? The pronoun in either case may be redundant, but not uncalled for if the writer considers it necessary to maintain clarity-- which s/he probably does in this complex composition.

Anonymous · Answer

Mister MicawberFrankly, I cannot work through all your analysis, but 1a and 1b are good, 2a is of course bad, and 2b is still find grammatically, as 'them' is the object of a preposition. Would you prefer that it read 'their idiomatic use and right understanding'? The pronoun in either case may be redundant, but not uncalled for if the writer considers it necessary to maintain clarity-- which s/he probably does in this complex composition.

Yes, it is better to use "their" and even better, I believe, to use no pronouns at all. My theory is that if this "them" which is first used as the object of the preposition "with" is in conflict with the relative pronoun of the clause in (2a), then why is it not, when "with" is replaced with "of", while the word "them" still refers to the same noun phrase "the common words" in the same adjective clause at a different location?

Anonymous · Answer

...refers to... at from a different location

Pkr · Answer

Anonymous(2a) "the common words that one meets with them every day"

(2a) is ungrammmatical. There should be a "gap", the placeholder where the relative pronoun fits in,in the relative clause.

Anonymous (2b) "... the common words that ... but are entagled ... that the idiomatic use of them is far from easy".
Here the word "them" tries to reference the NP "the common words" through the relative pronoun "that" it precedes, just as what happens in (2a).

...in so many connexions that the idiomatic use and right understanding of them are far from easy.

Them has nothing to do with relativizer here. It is a reqular pronoun for"the common words". "so..that..." is another construct different from the relative clause.

Anonymous · Answer

So I understand it as that (2a) is wrong because the word "them" becomes the placeholder to leave no place for the relative to fill in, but (2b) is ok because the relative has the place and sits there requiring nothing else.

An adjective clause with complex grammatical sutructures

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