These structures can be dealt with together for a number of reasons. Firstly, there is a significant overlap between interrogative pronouns, adjectives and adverbs and relative pronouns, adjectives and adverbs. Secondly, despite this, these terms function differently for reasons which are not immediately obvious. Thirdly, in both cases, the same ambiguity regarding the classification of terms arises; which terms are pronouns, which adjectives and which adverbs, and what is the basis for the classification. We can go further an ask how useful the classification is and whether these cases point to an underlying limitation.
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Adjectives & Adverbs
Adjectives and adverbs function to qualify other terms; adjectives qualify nouns and adverbs qualify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs and occasionally prepositions. Both classes are extendible. In each case there is a relatively small core general purpose lexicon which changes rarely and a larger domain specific lexicon which is constantly being revised and updated.
Interrogative and relative adjectives and adverbs are dealt with more fully in sections 12 below which deals with questions and relative clauses.
Continue readingStatement structure
A grammatical clause expresses a single complete idea. A grammatical sentence can either be a single clause or multiple clauses connected together by some linking mechanism. This means that a sequence of ideas can be expressed either by forming multiple sentences or by joining multiple clauses into a single sentence. The difference is largely a matter of style rather than grammar. For that reason, in these notes, I will refer to both sentences and clauses as statements.
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