English Language & Usage Asked by tardy pigeon on September 2, 2021
My usual grammatical spidey-sense has let me down here.
The sentence "I can’t begin to fathom how their tiny bodies would cope with what they had to carry" FEELS complex to me. I feel that
i) "how their tiny bodies would cope" is a subordinate/dependent clause.
BUT
ii) it also feels like the object of the main clause "I can’t begin to fathom".
So I’m currently labelling it like this: Main clause [I can’t begin to fathom] + subordinate clause [how their tiny bodies would cope] + prepositional phrase [with what they had to carry].
Is this correct as you understand it – I feel there’s some grammatical info I’ve missed here for this confusion to occur!
In the words of CGEL (§ 10.1 p. 719), a complex sentence is recognized by the fact that "one or more of its elements is realized as a subordinate clause".
Thus, the object "how their tiny bodies would cope with what they had to carry" being a subordinate, this sentence is complex; that is all there is to it.
"with what they had to carry" is a subordinate clause of the subordinate/ superordinate clause "how their tiny bodies would cope with what they had to carry".
Correct answer by LPH on September 2, 2021
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