This week's baffling grammatical advice
Paula Bell's
Hightech Writing: How
to Write for the Electronics Industry (Wiley, 1985) has a short
section on relative clauses in its chapter on grammar. It begins
(p. 110):
Relative clauses--which are introduced
by the relative pronouns what,
whose, who, whom, that, and which--should immediately follow
the nouns they modify.
Careful readers will have noticed
that
in this list.
That
certainly can introduce relative clauses, but it's also certainly not a
pronoun. However, this mis-categorization is very common in
writing about English grammar -- even
MWDEU gets this wrong -- so let's
just pass over it, scowling. (Meanwhile, she fails to mention
"zero", or "contact", relatives, with no relative marker, as in
the
book I just read.)
Really careful readers will also have noticed
what on the list: when can
what be used as a relative
pronoun? In fact, pretty much every book of grammatical advice
observes that the relative pronoun
what,
though quite old in English, is now thoroughly non-standard, though
sometimes rustically colorful: "Dance with the ones what brung
you". Is that what Bell is thinking of?
No, and we don't have to wait to find out. She takes up the
relative markers in the order she listed them, so
what comes first. This is the
ENTIRE subsection on
what:
Don't use what in sentences like [The
following paragraphs tell what steps to take]; instead use the.
Baffling. It's thoroughly confused, and stunningly unhelpful to
boot.
First,
what steps to take in
the example above is not a headed relative clause; it does not follow a
noun, much less a noun it modifies. It's a subordinate clause
serving as the direct object of the verb
tell.
Second,
what steps to take in
the example above is not even a headless, or "free", relative.
Now,
what can indeed
introduce free relatives -- as in
What
she had in her hand sparkled 'that which she had in her hand
sparkled, the thing (that/which) she had in her hand sparkled' -- so it
does indeed belong on a list of relative pronouns. It's just that
what steps to take in the
example above is not a free relative; it's an interrogative clause,
with the
WH determiner
what modifying the following noun
steps. (
Which would be possible in the
place of
what, though with a
slightly different meaning.) The determiners
what and
which cannot, in fact, occur in
restrictive relative clauses, whether headed or free; they are specifically interrogative:
headed:
the solution which occurred to them
*the solution which/what idea occurred to them
free:
What she had in her hand sparkled.
*What/which thing she had in her hand sparkled.
A further relevant difference between free relatives and subordinate
interrogatives: both can be infinitival rather than finite, but
infinitival free relatives (as in
The
person to see is Kim) do not allow a relative marker (*
The person who/which/that to see is Kim),
while subordinate interrogatives must of course have their
WH
words (
I don't know who/which to see).
Corresponding to the differences in syntax between free relatives and
interrogative subordinate clauses (of which I've given only a sampling
here), there's also a subtle semantic difference: free relatives denote
ordinary individuals, like the sparkly thing in her hand, while
subordinate interrogatives denote answers to questions, like the answer
to the question "What steps should I take?"
To summarize so far: Bell's example is utterly irrelevant to a
discussion of relative clauses. It has an interrogative
construction, not a relative one, in it.
And there's nothing wrong with it, grammatically or
stylistically. Yes, it has a near-paraphrase with
the in place of
what:
The following paragraphs tell the steps to
take. This is a kind of covert interrogative, and I
suspect that it's harder to process than the version with
what, which is overtly
interrogative.
Finally, Bell just tells her readers not to use
what in "sentences like"
The following paragraphs tell what steps
to take. How on earth can the reader be expected to
generalize from this one example? What other sentences, exactly,
are like this one? (Does the proscription extend to
I don't know what steps to take?
To
The following paragraphs tell
which steps to take? To
What
steps to take is a mystery? And on and on.)
Yes, I understand that Bell might have been reluctant to introduce a
lot of grammatical terminology. But if she wants to pick out
subordinate interrogatives with
WH determiners for
special treatment, she's going to have to get technical.
Otherwise, her advice is simply useless, and the little subsection on
"relative"
what would have
been better omitted.
(Once again, thanks to Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky, for continuing to
feed me obscure, out-of-print, used, and remaindered books on grammar,
usage, and style.)
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at February 17, 2006 02:44 PM