Little Jim is going to spend his holiday in Paris, _____ lives his uncle.
A. which B. who C. where D. that
The answer key is C. where ? However, I don’t understand this sentence. Why can “where” function as subject ??
Little Jim is going to spend his holiday in Paris, _____ lives his uncle. ??
Please explain this sentence to me. Thanks in advance.
Ok, I’ve got it. Anyways, thanks all
Hi Rasp,
Even if you choose option C, the sentence is incorrectly written. The word order in the last clause is NOT correct. The sentence would be correctly written this way:
If you wanted to use ‘which’, you could write the sentence this way:
Note that this option would also require a word order at the end that is different from the word order you originally posted.
[color=white].
[color=darkblue]_____________________________________________________________
[size=75]“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged
by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.[/size]
That is not my choice, it is the answer key.
Little Jim is going to spend his holiday in Paris, _____ lives his uncle.
A. which B. who C. where D. that
I think it is inversion.
According to Practical English Usage (Michael Swan), he writes:
When an adverbial expression of place or direction comes at the beginning of a clause, intransitive verbs are often put before their subjects. This happens especially when a new indefinite subject is being introduced. The structure is most common in literary and descriptive writing
Under a tree was lying one of the biggest men I had ever seen
On the grass sat an enormous frog
Directly in front of them stood a great castle
Along the road came a strange procession
In the sentence above, ‘where’ refers to ‘in Paris’. Therefore, I think it is an inverted clause.
No, Rasp, the word order is simply incorrect.
You could have subject-verb inversion if the word ‘where’ were used as a question word like this, for example:
- Where does his uncle live?
That would invert subject and verb, in this case required because the sentence is a question.
However, in your sentence, the word order must be as I stated in my first post. So, there is an error in whatever publication you took your sentence from.
As regards your quotes and examples from Michael Swan, you should note that none of the examples you provided has a clause except this one:
- Under a tree was lying one of the biggest men color=blue I had ever seen.
The word order in that clause is subject-verb: ‘I had ever seen’ (not inverted). There is subject-verb inversion in the main sentence because the phrase ‘under a tree’ was fronted.
Yes, ‘where’ refers to ‘Paris’. However, joining two independent clauses does not automatically result in subject-verb inversion. In your sentence, the word ‘where’ is simply moved to the beginning of the clause because it refers to ‘Paris’.
1. Little Jim is going to spend his holiday in Paris.
2. His uncle lives there.
In sentence 2, the word ‘there’ refers to Paris. Your original sentence reflects a joining of sentences 1 and 2. In order to join them, the word ‘where’ will follow the word ‘Paris’ and the rest of the clause remains the same.
Sentence 2 above can also be worded this way:
2a. That is where his uncle lives.
As you can see, the word order is ‘uncle lives’ in that sentence as well.
[color=white].
[color=darkblue]________________________________________________________
[size=75]“Documentary films are created in an inverted funnel of declining possibility.” ~ Bruce Jackson[/size]
@Esl_Expert: Thank you very much. I’ve understood it. So, my original sentence is incorrectly grammatical, isn’t it ?
My original sentence is from a forum about English in my country, this topic is “Easily confuse, easily wrong”
tienganh.com.vn/showthread.p … post477073
There are many results when I search this sentence on Google. Most of them are of Chinese.
When a friend of mine asked me about this sentence, I thought it was outrageous because I had never seen such peculiar grammar like this??