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Rep. Lauren Boebert has mocked philanthropist Bill Gates' wish to move toward a future in which people eat only synthetic meat—by sharing an image of a steak that a New York butcher claims was lifted from its website.

It's a Newsweek article. I understand what it means but the structure of italic part is not familiar. I think the above is overlapped sentences and the primitive form would be that was lifted from its(a butcher's) website. The problem is the isertion of whole sentence a New York butcher claims between a subject that and a verb was.

Is it possible? Yes it should be because it's an article of a global media. How is it possible? I have never seen an example like that in any English grammar books. Is it a broken sentence which is colloquial and friendly?

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    No - there's not a "whole sentence" being inserted here. There's an optional "adjectival" that- clause modifying the existing noun phrase an image of a steak. The adjectival clause doesn't have a subject, so it's not a sentence (that would be A New York butcher claims that image of a steak was lifted from its website).
    – FumbleFingers
    Feb 19, 2021 at 12:22
  • I assume you don't have a problem with I read the letter that she wrote. So you shouldn't have a problem with I read the letter that she claimed was written by her mother.
    – FumbleFingers
    Feb 19, 2021 at 12:26
  • "That a New York butcher claims was lifted from its website" is a relative clause modifying "image of a steak". Note that "that" is not subject, but a subordinator functioning as a 'marker'. Thus we have: "a steak [that a New York butcher claims [___ was lifted from its website]]", where gap functions as subject of the embedded "was lifted" clause and has "image of a steak" as antecedent.
    – BillJ
    Feb 19, 2021 at 13:05
  • @FumbleFingers Is the whole that a New York butcher claims was lifted from its website an adjectival clause? If so are there 2 verbs which are claims and was in 1 clause?
    – SHIN JaeGuk
    Feb 19, 2021 at 13:56
  • Well, as @BillJ says, it's a relative clause modifying "image of a steak". So if you've got to choose between "noun, verb, adjective" I suppose it's the last of those categories (where "image of a steak" is obviously a noun, and the actual "primary verb" in your cited text is mocked).
    – FumbleFingers
    Feb 19, 2021 at 14:16

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Rep. Lauren Boebert has mocked philanthropist Bill Gates' wish to move toward a future in which people eat only synthetic meat—by sharing an image of a steak [that a New York butcher claims was lifted from its website].

The bracketed element "that a New York butcher claims was lifted from its website" is a relative clause modifying "image of a steak". Note that "that" is not the subject of the relative clause, but a subordinator functioning as a 'marker'.

Thus we have the NP: "an image of a steak [that a New York butcher claims [___ was lifted from its website]]", where gap ___ functions as subject of the embedded "was lifted" clause and has "image of a steak" as antecedent.

The outer brackets surround the relative clause and the inner ones surround the embedded clause that has gap___ as its subject.

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  • What is the object of claims?
    – SHIN JaeGuk
    Feb 20, 2021 at 5:10
  • @SHINJaeGuk "Claims" does not have an object.
    – BillJ
    Feb 20, 2021 at 7:15
  • Can a transitive verb exist without an object? Or do you think it is an intrasitive one?
    – SHIN JaeGuk
    Feb 20, 2021 at 12:05
  • "Claims" is intransitive here. Note that the relativised item ('gap') is not object of "claims" but subject of the embedded "was lifted" clause. We understand that a New York butcher claims [an image of a steak was lifted from its website]. The bracketed clause is complement of "claims". OK now?
    – BillJ
    Feb 20, 2021 at 12:15

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