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Do you provide your consent as this child's parent or guardian for them to have access to website?

This is a sentence appeared on website, but I am confused about the sentence structure, in the as clause, they dont have a verb, and dont make clear what is the consent to.

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  • The main verb is consent and the object of the verb is access to X. The actual problem with the sentence is that there is no pronoun or article before website. It should be "this website" (or at least "the website"). Commented Sep 18, 2018 at 18:52

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That is because "as" is not introducing a clause in this case. The meaning is "Do you, as the child's parent or guardian, consent that the child have access to this website."

Formally, it involves an ellipsis: "Do you, [in your legal capacity] as the child's parent or guardian, consent ..."

It is not a well written sentence.

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There is no as clause; as is being used as a preposition here. As Collins has it, meaning four applies:

You use as when you are indicating what someone or something is or is thought to be, or what function they have.

The sentence you quote could be rewritten as

Do you, being this child's parent or guardian, provide your consent for the child to have access to the website?

An as statement to indicate that someone is being, speaking, acting, etc. in the capacity, role, condition, etc. of something is very common; you may have seen formulations like

As a taxpayer, I demand to know why this road is still not repaired.

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  • Thank you so much. Your explanation has already made this clear. I found out finally what's most confused in this sentence is not the usage of as, but the consent for someone to do, as I only knew consent to something. in this case, it is different from that typical usage, as a result, I interpreted it in the way for them follows the guardian not with consent. if it were interpreted in my way, the sentence would become strange and hard to understand.
    – Young
    Commented Sep 18, 2018 at 20:17

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