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A sentence in this the web page confused me.

What we have in this new administration is for the first time in a very long time is a government that’s not divided.

Maybe we can break the sentence down as below

The root structure: "A is that B" (here A is a subject clause, B is a object clause.)

A = What we have in this new administration

B = for the first time in a very long time is a government that’s not divided.

(for the first time in a very long time is modifier, B can be shorted as is a government that’s not divided.)

My problems are clear:

  1. no subject in B----is a government that’s not divided.

  2. how to explain that’s not divided?

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    It is a grammatical error. The second is shouldn't be there.
    – user3169
    Nov 12, 2016 at 2:46
  • @user3169 it's a direct quote of reported speech and so is fairly natural when the person being quoted hasn't had the chance to organize their thoughts.
    – Andrew
    Nov 12, 2016 at 3:49

1 Answer 1

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First of all you should understand this is reported speech, and so it's a written version of what someone said, possibly in an interview where they didn't have time to prepare what they were going to say. The second "is" in the sentence is not grammatical, but nevertheless people do talk this way. So you should become familiar with these kind of common, trivial errors.

I expect if this person had time to organize his thoughts, he would have instead said something like this:

[For the first time in a very long time] [in this new administration] we have a government [that's not divided].

Both "for the first time in a very long time" and "in this new adminstration" are adverb phrases that modify "have". "That's not divided" is an adjective phrase that modifies "government".

"A government that's not divided" means that Republicans have control of both houses of the United States legislature and the Presidency. Also, the Supreme Court (the Judicial branch) may soon have a conservative majority.

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  • Glad to read your explaination!Would you mind to introduce me some books or web page links on sentence structure?
    – showkey
    Nov 12, 2016 at 4:15
  • Here is one. It has a lot of information, but if it helps remember it is for native speakers who also have problems forming sentences. Also, this talks about where to place sentence modifiers.
    – Andrew
    Nov 12, 2016 at 15:13

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