How is this a complex sentence? “What frightens me is the otherness of vultures.”
I’m reading Priscilla Long’s The Wriiter’s Portable Mentor. In the chapter breaking down the complex sentence (which she describes as a sentence that has an independent clause and at least one dependent clause), she includes the following sentence in the section in which she deals with sentences with WHAT and WHY clauses:
What frightens me is the otherness of vultures.
She marks “What frightens me” as the dependent clause. What remains is “is the otherness of vultures.”
I’m confused by this example. How is “is the otherness of vultures” an independent clause? A clause must have a subject and a predicate. In what sense does the supposed independent clause “is the otherness of vultures” have a subject and predicate?
Can anyone help?
Top answer
She marks “What frightens me” as the dependent clause. Yes. , the whole sentence.
- She marks “What frightens me” as the dependent clause.
- Yes.
- , the whole sentence.
- anonymous How is “is the otherness of vultures” an independent clause?
- It isn't.
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anonymousWhat frightens me is the otherness of vultures.She marks “What frightens me” as the dependent clause.
Yes. The dependent clause is embedded in the full independent clause, i.e., the whole sentence.
anonymousHow is “is the otherness of vultures” an independent clause?
It isn't.
a
0Perhaps this approach will help.
What frightens me is the otherness of vultures.
"What" can be replaced by: "The thing that". This transforms the content cause (noun clause) into a noun with a relative clause.
The thing [that frightens me] is the otherness of vultures.
Now the main clause / dependent clause can be seen more e
0Thanks, CJ.
I realized something different was going on from the other examples she uses in the section on complex sentences, but I couldn’t quite figure out what to call it.
If I start to go down this path at this moment, I’m going to lose track of why I’m actully delving into this book. But if there is a resource out there that clearly explains complex sentences that have this co
0That last bit is exactly right, CJ. This is tangential at best, but here we are. I have a tendency to get obsessed with something when I am confused by it (the simpler the confusing bit, the more maddening it becomes to me). No matter the overall importance of what’s confusing me, I can’t let it sit.
Nevertheless, I’ve always thought I had a perfect understanding of what is a pretty stra
0What frightens me is the otherness of vultures.
It is what traditional grammar calls a complex sentence, but not for the reason Ms Long gives.
“What frightens me” is not a clause, but a noun phrase. It’s called a ‘fused’ relative construction, where “what” means “that which”, so we can paraphrase it as the more formal “That which frightens me”.
In other words, th
0
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