The cuts we need...
This last figure is particularly alarming, as the IPCC has warned that rises greater than 1.5C risk triggering climatic destabilisation while those higher than 2C make such events even more likely. “We are now getting very close to some dangerous tipping points in the behaviour of the climate – but as this latest leaked report of the IPCC’s work reveals, it is going to be very difficult to achieve the cuts we need to make to prevent that happening,” said Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
(The Guardian.)
Is "the cuts we need to make" a noun phrase followed by the non-finite clause "to prevent that happening" in the paragraph above?
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I understand that the NP is the complement of "to achieve" and the non-finite clause is the clause of purpose.
Top answer
e. the full noun phrase is "the cuts we need to make to prevent that happening".
- e.
- the full noun phrase is "the cuts we need to make to prevent that happening".
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It is ambiguous whether or not "to prevent that happening" is part of the modifier of "cuts", but my natural interpretation is that it is, i.e. the full noun phrase is "the cuts we need to make to prevent that happening".
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