In Nesfield's Outline of English Grammar (the McMillan Press Ltd, London and Basingstoke, 1978) he identifies the noun clause in the following sentence: The rumor that he is sick is false. I see no reason why "that he is sick" is a noun clause in apposition (as Nesfield says it is) and not an adjective clause modifying "rumor." What am I failing to see in this example?
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A grammar originally published in 1901 can be expected to include a number of oddities. Can you provide a link to an online version, or enter the salient portion of Nesfield's text by using the edit link below your question?– P. E. Dant Reinstate MonicaCommented Oct 5, 2016 at 2:03
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@P.E.Dant Alas, it is not an "oddity"; it was still standard doctrine in the grammar I was taught in the late 1950s. What is odd is that it's lingered in English pedagogy for almost a century; indeed, a high school English teacher who could produce this analysis would probably pride himself on his unusually deep knowledge (unless of course he concealed his eccentric interest in grammar lest he be accused of recidivist elitism).– StoneyB on hiatusCommented Oct 5, 2016 at 2:29
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@StoneyB I'm sure there are many students even now being taught these things. If not oddities, we can call them with less opprobrium, perhaps, survivals? Or is there a more piquant term?– P. E. Dant Reinstate MonicaCommented Oct 5, 2016 at 2:35
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@P.E.Dant Zombies?– StoneyB on hiatusCommented Oct 5, 2016 at 2:39
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1@StoneyB I'd forgotten that you are USAian. Where I prepped, we didn't have commissars; we had obersturmführers. It surprises me that we were spared Nesfield.– P. E. Dant Reinstate MonicaCommented Oct 5, 2016 at 3:16
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2 Answers
Nesfield's description of this use of what is these days usually called a 'content clause' (that + finite clause) as a "noun clause", and your own description of it as an "adjective clause", evidence a rather old-fashioned way of understanding the role played by the clause, in which the morphological category "part of speech" is held to determine a constituent's syntactical role.
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Huddleston and Pullum 2002, 1016-1017) gives two convincing reasons for rejecting the traditional analysis.
Many of the nouns which license this construction are closely related to verbs (if not indeed derived from them) which take precisely the same sort of 'content clauses' as complements:
the thought that he is sick ... He thinks that he is sick
the belief that he is sick ... I believe that he is sick
the conclusion that he is sick ... The doctors have concluded that he is sickIn some cases there are even adjectives from the same etymological root which take the same complements:
He feared he was sick.
His fear that he was sick ...
He was afraid that he was sick ...There is no reason why a constituent having the same sense and form and bearing the same relation to the word which licenses it should bear a different label simply because that word changes its form or the syntactic role it plays.
In any case, the notion of apposition is wholly unjustifiable. An appositive "renames" the term it is apposed to; but that he is sick is itself neither a belief nor a thought nor a conclusion nor a fear—nor a rumour—it is what is believed, thought, concluded, feared or rumored.
I concur with CGEL that "it is a complement, licensed by the head of the VP, NP or AdjP in which it occurs".
P. E. Dant Reinstate Monica
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answered Oct 5, 2016 at 2:09
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Here is a demonstration that "squishy" need not mean "imprecise." Commented Oct 5, 2016 at 2:48
The clause that he is sick defines the Noun rumor. A clause that performs the job of identifying or defining a Noun is actually in apposition; this is not an Adjective Clause. When you are confused, just put a question with what to the Verb of the dependent clause, in this case: what he is? the answer is sick, not rumour. Thus, the clause in question is not an Adjective Clause. Only a Noun Clause can be in apposition to a Noun.
