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Anonymous Posted 11 years ago
Grammar
Subject of subordinating conjuction
Hello, I recently ran across post in a political forum that seems ambiguous or even confusing. (Please forgive yet please correct any improper terminology I use below; it's been ages since I studied English grammar.) Here is the sentence in question (please ignore the political content, I just didn't want to alter the sentence in any way):
"Yeah, and actually, the status of women was so much better before capitalism, and by "capitalism" i mean systems where people are exploited for the accumulation of wealth, so it stretched back to about 10,000 years ago."
According to the author, the facts they are trying to communicate are 1) capitalism began 10,000 years ago 2) women had better social status before capitalism. However, it seemed to me that the "it" in the subordinate clause actually refers to main subject "the status of women" and not to the object of "before capitalism" ie capitalism. Here was my feeble attempt to explain this to the author of the sentence:
'I'm actually not entirely sure about this from a grammatical perspective (curious myself actually), but I think it's supposed to be "stretched forward to about 10,000 years ago" not back. But maybe a better wording all together is something like "spanning human history before about 10,000 years ago".
I think the clause "so it stretched back to about 10,000 years ago." grammatically modifies the main subject "the status of women ... before capitalism", not the object of the preposition phrase "before capitalism" ie capitalism. Ie I'm not sure the intervening parenthetical phrase "and by capitalism ..." changes the subject of the subordinating conjunction "so it stretches".'
Can you please elucidate us? Thank you in advance.
"Yeah, and actually, the status of women was so much better before capitalism, and by "capitalism" i mean systems where people are exploited for the accumulation of wealth, so it stretched back to about 10,000 years ago."
According to the author, the facts they are trying to communicate are 1) capitalism began 10,000 years ago 2) women had better social status before capitalism. However, it seemed to me that the "it" in the subordinate clause actually refers to main subject "the status of women" and not to the object of "before capitalism" ie capitalism. Here was my feeble attempt to explain this to the author of the sentence:
'I'm actually not entirely sure about this from a grammatical perspective (curious myself actually), but I think it's supposed to be "stretched forward to about 10,000 years ago" not back. But maybe a better wording all together is something like "spanning human history before about 10,000 years ago".
I think the clause "so it stretched back to about 10,000 years ago." grammatically modifies the main subject "the status of women ... before capitalism", not the object of the preposition phrase "before capitalism" ie capitalism. Ie I'm not sure the intervening parenthetical phrase "and by capitalism ..." changes the subject of the subordinating conjunction "so it stretches".'
Can you please elucidate us? Thank you in advance.
Top answer
The "it" is ambiguous, and the sentence is not well-written. By "it" the author means the expanse of time before capitalism, but the reader can only infer that if they know history. "stretch back" means from the present day, backwards in time.
- The "it" is ambiguous, and the sentence is not well-written.
- By "it" the author means the expanse of time before capitalism, but the reader can only infer that if they know history.
- "stretch back" means from the present day, backwards in time.
- Only relative subordinate clauses "modify" nouns.
- This is not a relative clause.
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1 Answers
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The "it" is ambiguous, and the sentence is not well-written.
By "it" the author means the expanse of time before capitalism, but the reader can only infer that if they know history.
"stretch back" means from the present day, backwards in time.
Only relative subordinate clauses "modify" nouns. This is not a relative clause. It does not "modify" anything.
"Yeah,
By "it" the author means the expanse of time before capitalism, but the reader can only infer that if they know history.
"stretch back" means from the present day, backwards in time.
Only relative subordinate clauses "modify" nouns. This is not a relative clause. It does not "modify" anything.
"Yeah,
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