# I don't know who the man wearing the black hat and the purple cloak is. (Word-order)



## Scholiast

Hearty greetings all round

My curiosity issues from a discussion (http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2972228&) in the English Forum < ... >.

For every beginner learning German it is hammered home that in _Hauptsätzen_ the verb occupies second position, and that in subordinate clauses the verb is postponed to the end.

Has this always been the case (if we go back to OHG, or even further)? If not, then when(ce) did this strict rigidity originate? I ask because there appears to be one (residually Germanic?) phenomenon in modern English which corresponds to the Germanic formula, namely indirect questions, such as:

"I don't know who the man wearing the black hat and the purple cloak *is*".

From my intimate knowledge of Latin and Greek, and reading-knowledge of French, Spanish and Italian, I can't find a parallel.

Thoughts, anyone?

Σ


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## Gernot Back

Scholiast said:


> "I don't know who the man wearing the black hat and the purple cloak *is*".


What is so peculiar about this  English word order? There is a subject and a copula verb plus a relative pronoun in the function of a predicate noun and nothing else in this relative clause; so the coplua verb is in the last position. That has nothing to do with German word order!


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## Scholiast

Dear all

Thanks tø Gernot B. for the swift response.

But with all respect, this does not answer my question. In all other subordinate clauses...

"Because the man is wearing a black hat..."
"If he is wearing a black hat..."

.... the English word-order remains the same as if it were a principal clause. It is only in this indirect question syntax that a verb can (or occasionally must) be postponed.

Gernot may well be right, that this has nothing to do with the historical philology of English as a Germanic language. But I remain mystified.

Σ


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## Hutschi

Hi, I searched for word order in Old English - and it was partly the same as in German here.

http://wmich.edu/medieval/resources/IOE/wordord.html


> *12.4. Subject . . . Verb*
> 
> The Subject . . . Verb word-order is commonly found in subordinate clauses and clauses introduced by _and/ond or ac ‘but’, though it does sometimes occur in independent clauses.  ..._



It is not clear in your case, whether it is really a relict of this, but it gives indeed some propability.

Please read the article.
Considering this your question maes absolutely sense.

I can only say, it may be, it may also be a later development in the special case.
But I feel, you are right.

PS: I did not check old German yet.
---

"I don't know who the man is". This is the essential part. Why is "is" at the end?


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## Schimmelreiter

Scholiast said:


> Dear all
> 
> Thanks tø Gernot B. for the swift response.
> 
> But with all respect, this does not answer my question. In all other subordinate clauses...
> 
> "Because the man is wearing a black hat..."
> "If he is wearing a black hat..."
> 
> .... the English word-order remains the same as if it were a principal clause. It is only in this indirect question syntax that a verb can (or occasionally must) be postponed.
> 
> Gernot may well be right, that this has nothing to do with the historical philology of English as a Germanic language. But I remain mystified.
> 
> Σ


But the verb isn't postponed in indirect questions!

_I don't know what he told his father yesterday.
I don't know whom he met in London last week.
I don't know why he wrote that letter to his father three days ago.


_In each of those cases, the finite verb comes last in German, but it of course doesn't in English. Concerning your sentence, also with a predicative pronoun and a copula verb, the verb doesn't come last in English: _I'd like to know what that is in your opinion. _If of course you choose to have the sentence end with _is_, omitting _in your opinion_​, the verb chances to be last, not for reasons of word order but because you simply don't have any constituent follow it.


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## Gernot Back

Scholiast said:


> "Because the man is wearing a black hat..."
> "If he is wearing a black hat..."


There is no object in your subordinate clause


Scholiast said:


> "(...) who the man wearing the black hat and the purple cloak *is*".


... so why should any other phrase come after the verb?
The only phrase, which would go to the end in a main clause as in:

_The man wearing the black hat and the purple cloak is this one._​
... can't occupy the end position in the subordinate clause since it's equivalent (in the subordinate relative clause) is the relative pronoun itself, with which you have to *start *the relative clause as a subordinate conjunction.


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## Schimmelreiter

Hutschi said:


> "I don't know who the man is". This is the essential part. Why is "is" at the end?


Where else should it be? It's the standard subject-predicate order: _​I live. _There's no reason for inversion _(*I don't know who is the man.) _since it's an indirect question!


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## perny

What you describe are known as indirect questions with embedded question or interrogative content clauses. Like direct questions all can exhibit "Wh-" question word creation and movement. For example,



The man is my father.
The man is *who*?
*Who is* the man? (direct question: wh-word + verb movement)
*who* the man is (embedded question: wh-word movement only)
I don't know *who *the man is. (indirect question).

So, the general topic is Wh-movement or Wh-fronting. This is displayed in many Indo-European languages and perhaps others. I can find no meaningful discussion as to its history, unfortunately.


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## Hutschi

Schimmelreiter said:


> Where else should it be? It's the standard subject-predicate order: _​I live. _There's no reason for inversion _(*I don't know who is the man.) _since it's an indirect question!



Hi, if I understand it right, "who" is the subject here, and "the man" is a predicative noun. (I learned about predicative nouns only recently, so it may be incorrect, but as far as I understand there is a difference between "who the man is" and "the man is".)

In German it is more parallel than in many other cases.
Ich weiß nicht, *wer der Mann ist.*
I don't know, *who the man is.
*
The word order in the main clauses is quite different, however.


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## Schimmelreiter

_the man _is the subject. _is _is the copula. _who _​is the predicative.


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## berndf

Schimmelreiter said:


> _the man _is the subject. _is _is the copula. _who _​is the predicative.


That is by no means clear. _Wer _is a legitimate subject pronoun (_Ich weiß nicht, wer da liegt_).


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## Hutschi

I just found, we did not answer the main question, but the context.



Scholiast said:


> ...
> 
> For every beginner learning German it is hammered home that in _Hauptsätzen_ the verb occupies second position, and that in subordinate clauses the verb is postponed to the end.
> 
> Has this always been the case (if we go back to OHG, or even further)? If not, then when(ce) did this strict rigidity originate? ...
> 
> 
> Σ



Hi, indeed it was established in the Old High German time, 

I found some ressources.

one is
http://conf.ling.cornell.edu/DiGSX/abstracts/Axel.pdf
"The Janus-Faced Syntax of Old High GermanIndo-European Legacy — Beginnings of Verb-SecondKatrin Axel, Saarland University"



> One major innovative feature of Old High German syntax was that the precursor of the'prefield' (Vorfeld) had already evolved, i.e. a position that was the target of both operatormovement (wh-movement, topicalization and the fronting of focussed XPs) and of so-called'Stylistic Fronting'. The latter term refers to the phenomenon that an XP had to be fronted even ifthere was no semantic/pragmatic trigger for that movement. This was an important steptowards verb-second. Another important innovation was the development of generalized V-toCmovement.



So there seem to be two answers: Verb second was not as strict as now, and it it established because of reasons.

There are lots of sources if you search, but I found only few free ressources. Search for "verb second old high german".

I am not a specialist at that area.


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## Schimmelreiter

@berndf

The man is ill. How is the man? I don't know _how the man is._
The man is Mr Smith. Who is the man? I don't know _who the man is._


In all six sentences _the man _is the subject and _is _is the copula. _ill/how/Mr Smith/who _​are the predicatives.


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## berndf

Scholiast said:


> Hearty greetings all round
> 
> My curiosity issues from a discussion (http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2972228&) in the English Forum < ... >.
> 
> For every beginner learning German it is hammered home that in _Hauptsätzen_ the verb occupies second position, and that in subordinate clauses the verb is postponed to the end.
> 
> Has this always been the case (if we go back to OHG, or even further)? If not, then when(ce) did this strict rigidity originate? I ask because there appears to be one (residually Germanic?) phenomenon in modern English which corresponds to the Germanic formula, namely indirect questions, such as:
> 
> "I don't know who the man wearing the black hat and the purple cloak *is*".
> 
> From my intimate knowledge of Latin and Greek, and reading-knowledge of French, Spanish and Italian, I can't find a parallel.
> 
> Thoughts, anyone?
> 
> Σ


I agree with what has been said, viz. that your sample sentence has nothing to do with German subordinate clause word order. It just looks a bit this was because it has an unusually (for English, not for German, though) long subject noun phrase (_the man wearing the black hat and the purple cloak_).

I don't know the exact development stages, but the German subordinate clause word order developed only in Middle High German and is not an original Germanic feature.

But V2 word order is and the the subject-verb inversion in questions almost certainly is a reflex or the original V2 word order (_Who (1) is (2) he (3)?_) that has still basically intact in Old English though it had already back then more exceptions than other Germanic languages. What is left to be explained is what subject-verb inversion in _wh_-partical-free _yes/no_ questions (_Are you at home_?) has to do with V2 word order. The standard explanation is that _yes/no_ questions developed out of _either-or_ questions: _Is it either true or false that you are at home?_ In Old English as well as in Old High German either-or questions were constructed with the _wh_-particle _whether_ (_hƿæðer_ is Old English, _huuedar _in Old High German, _weder_ in modern German). Originally, yes/no questions were therefore probably introduced by the particle that later became_ whether_ (_Whether are you at home?_). This cannot be said for sure because in attested Old English _yes/no_ questions introduced this way were a ready rare.

Compare also this discussion.


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## berndf

Schimmelreiter said:


> @berndf
> 
> The man is ill. How is the man? I don't know _how the man is._
> The man is Mr Smith. Who is the man? I don't know _who the man is._
> 
> 
> In all six sentences _the man _is the subject and _is _is the copula. _ill/how/Mr Smith/who _​are the predicatives.


You cannot be sure that _the man_ is the subject of a sentence only because it is the subject of a different sentence. You are over-stretching the reasoning by analogy here. I am not denying that _the man_ can be analysed as the subject but so can _who_.


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## Schimmelreiter

The question was whether indirect questions were an exceptional case of German-style verb-last syntax. I don't think they are. All indirect questions, no matter what question word there is, can be analysed as conforming with the standard _​verb__-follows-subject_​ pattern.


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## Hutschi

The question was: 





> "For every beginner learning German it is hammered home that in Hauptsätzen the verb occupies second position, and that in subordinate clauses the verb is postponed to the end.
> 
> Has this always been the case (if we go back to OHG, or even further)? If not, then when(ce) did this strict rigidity originate?"


The context was



> I ask because there appears to be one (residually Germanic?) phenomenon in modern English which corresponds to the Germanic formula, namely indirect questions, such as:
> 
> 
> "I don't know who the man wearing the black hat and the purple cloak is".



Tis is an (indirect) second question, and in the first answers, we concentrated on this, because the assumtion of analogy to German is wrong.
(I am not fully convinced regarding word order. At least in the recent state there is an analogy. But this can be caused by later development.) 

The answer to the first question ist Verb second was common in OHG in main clauses, but not so strict as now. And it was available in Old English, too.

Both questions seemed to have a connection, but the result is they have none direct connection.


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## berndf

Schimmelreiter said:


> The question was whether indirect questions were an exceptional case of German-style verb-last syntax. I don't think they are. All indirect questions, no matter what question word there is, can be analysed as conforming with the standard _​verb__-follows-subject_​ pattern.


Indirect questions follow subordinate clause structure, so the they follow _finite/verb-last _word order (with all the well known exceptions).


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## berndf

Hutschi said:


> The answer to the first question ist Verb second was common in OHG in main clauses, but not so strict as now. And it was available in Old English, too.


That is not quite the right way to phrase it. V2 sytax doesn't "come" from OHG. It is a common Germanic feature that OE and OHG both inherited from its common ancestor.


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## Schimmelreiter

berndf said:


> Schimmelreiter said:
> 
> 
> 
> The question was whether indirect questions were an exceptional case of German-style verb-last syntax. I don't think they are. All indirect questions, no matter what question word there is, can be analysed as conforming with the standard _​verb__-follows-subject_​ pattern.
> 
> 
> 
> Indirect questions follow subordinate clause structure, so the they follow _finite/verb-last _word order (with all the well known exceptions).
Click to expand...

I was of course referring to our _immediately preceding _discussion of _English_​ indirect questions:


berndf said:


> Schimmelreiter said:
> 
> 
> 
> @berndf
> 
> The man is ill. How is the man? I don't know _how the man is._
> The man is Mr Smith. Who is the man? I don't know _who the man is._
> 
> 
> In all six sentences _the man _is the subject and _is _is the copula. _ill/how/Mr Smith/who _​are the predicatives.
> 
> 
> 
> You cannot be sure that _the man_ is the subject of a sentence only because it is the subject of a different sentence. You are over-stretching the reasoning by analogy here. I am not denying that _the man_ can be analysed as the subject but so can _who_.
Click to expand...




See Scholiast's





Scholiast said:


> I ask because there appears to be one (residually Germanic?) phenomenon in modern English which corresponds to the Germanic formula, namely indirect questions, such as:
> 
> "I don't know who the man wearing the black hat and the purple cloak *is*".





See also





Schimmelreiter said:


> Scholiast said:
> 
> 
> 
> Dear all
> 
> Thanks tø Gernot B. for the swift response.
> 
> But with all respect, this does not answer my question. In all other subordinate clauses...
> 
> "Because the man is wearing a black hat..."
> "If he is wearing a black hat..."
> 
> .... the English word-order remains the same as if it were a principal clause. It is only in this indirect question syntax that a verb can (or occasionally must) be postponed.
> 
> Gernot may well be right, that this has nothing to do with the historical philology of English as a Germanic language. But I remain mystified.
> 
> Σ
> 
> 
> 
> But the verb isn't postponed in indirect questions!
> 
> _I don't know what he told his father yesterday.
> I don't know whom he met in London last week.
> I don't know why he wrote that letter to his father three days ago.
> 
> 
> _In each of those cases, the finite verb comes last in German, but it of course doesn't in English. Concerning your sentence, also with a predicative pronoun and a copula verb, the verb doesn't come last in English: _I'd like to know what that is in your opinion. _If of course you choose to have the sentence end with _is_, omitting _in your opinion_​, the verb chances to be last, not for reasons of word order but because you simply don't have any constituent follow it.
Click to expand...




So are or aren't English indirect questions





Schimmelreiter said:


> an exceptional case of German-style verb-last syntax? I don't think they are. All indirect questions, no matter what question word there is, can be analysed as conforming with the standard _​verb__-follows-subject_​ pattern.


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## berndf

That is quite the relevant part of the story. Characterising English syntax as _verb__-follows-subject_​ is only part of the story and not the one that lets us answer the question. Normal English word order is SVO. In indirect questions we can have OSV (_I don't know whom he saw_) and that looks much more like German subordinate clause syntax but not exactly: _I don't know whom he told the story _vs._ Ich weiß nicht, wem der die Geschichte erzählte._

I summary, I would say that there is some superficial similarity but it doesn't run need enough to come to the conclusion that those are related phenomena. I think we should study how the German subordinate clause syntax developed. I will do a bit of reading.


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## Schimmelreiter

Don't know if it's of any relevance but for all its syntactic freedom, Latin tends to place the finite verb at the end of subordinate clauses. See, for instance, the _senatus consultum ultimum_: _videant consules ne res publica detrimenti capiat. _


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## Sibutlasi

Scholiast said:


> Hearty greetings all round
> 
> My curiosity issues from a discussion (http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2972228&) in the English Forum < ... >.
> 
> For every beginner learning German it is hammered home that in _Hauptsätzen_ the verb occupies second position, and that in subordinate clauses the verb is postponed to the end.
> 
> Has this always been the case (if we go back to OHG, or even further)? If not, then when(ce) did this strict rigidity originate? I ask because there appears to be one (residually Germanic?) phenomenon in modern English which corresponds to the Germanic formula, namely indirect questions, such as:
> 
> "I don't know who the man wearing the black hat and the purple cloak *is*".
> 
> From my intimate knowledge of Latin and Greek, and reading-knowledge of French, Spanish and Italian, I can't find a parallel.
> 
> Thoughts, anyone?
> 
> Σ



First, your sentence is, at bottom, no different from _I don´t know who he is_, or _I don´t know who you are_ (which, by the way, clearly shows that _who _is not the subject of the indirect question; the subject is the long NP of your example, or the pronominal _he_ or _you_ in mine. The verb of the indirect question apparently occurs at the end only because the subject-complement that would ordinarily follow it in such a construction happens to be the focus of the indirect question (= _who_) and must be shifted to the front of the clause (= +Wh-Movement). The same happens in 'direct questions', of course, cf. _*Who *are you (are) *(<who)*? _The difference is that in an English 'direct question' Subject-Auxiliary-Inversion obligatorily applies along with +WH-Movement, which shifts the finite auxiliary forward, too, leaving the subject (= _you_) apparently last, whereas in an 'indirect question' only +WH-Movement applies, SAI does not, the verb _be_ does not accompany its complement forward, and, of course, once the complement _who_ is fronted into Focus, nothing pronounceable remains after the verb. [Since you are familiar with Spanish, note that in Spanish, which allows Subject-Predicate Inversion (= Subject-Postponement, Subject-Focusing,...) your long subject would be shifted rightwards and surface after the verb, i.e., we would say _No sé quién es el hombre del sombrero negro y el abrigo morado_, with the 'heavy' subject in End-Focus position, rather than _*No sé quién el hombre del sombrero negro y el abrigo morado es, _but, of course, English does not generally allow Subject Postponement]_. 

_Anyway, as Gernot Back, Schimmelreiter, Berndf and maybe others have already observed, this has nothing to do with the V-last constraint of subordinate German clauses, which is completely independent of the effects of (German) +Wh-Movement. In German, the finite verb of a subordinate clause is 'underlyingly' final (i.e., German has SOV in subordinate clauses) and its complement, therefore, must 'underlyingly' *precede* it. Of course, in an indirect question, just as in English (Spanish, Italian, ...), if it is the complement of _sein_ that constitutes the Focus of the question, _wer _will also be fronted and surface before the subject (as in _Ich weiss nicht, *wer* du bist), _but it is fronted from a *pre-verbal* position, *not from a post-verbal one*. To prove that the subject-complement of _sein_ precedes the verb in indirect questions, we need only consider cases like _Ich weiss nicht, warum du *mein Freund* bist (cf. *Ich weiss nicht, warum du bist mein Freund_), where the subject-complement is *not* the focus of the indirect question, cannot be fronted by +Wh-Movement, and must appear on the surface where it naturally belongs: before the verb _sein_.

As to your general question whether German has 'always' been V-second in root clauses and V-last in subordinate ones, what we can say is that both properties are attested since the oldest Germanic texts that have come down to us. The occasional counterexamples to V2 found in Early OE are typically due to the fact that certain discourse-level particles/coordinators may precede whatever occupied the OE 'Vorfeld'. As to the apparent counterexamples to V-last in old German subordinate clauses, most are just cases of 'epiphrasis': what follows the clause-final verb is not a complement or modifier of the verb, but a free 'expansion' of some pre-verbal element (a complement clause expanding a 'heralding' pre-verbal clitic, a 'relative clause' modifying a preverbal subject or object NP, etc.). Even if we now interpret such complement/relative clauses as 'extraposed', properly they must rather be considered 'juxtaposed', because they never were 'internal' to the clause (nor, of course, pre-verbal). As Delbrück, Wackernagel, Lehmann and others have shown, in the early stages of Germanic, complement, as well as 'relative' clauses, were simply independent clauses loosely added by juxtaposition and linked to their pronominal 'antecedents' (_es, das_, then _da_,... _der/die_) by gender and number 'agreement'. Only later were the demonstrative pronouns _das, der, die, _reanalised as 'conjunctions'/'relative pronouns' and the clauses themselves considered cases of 'extraposition' (and, when they were complements of a subordinate verb, an apparent exception to the V-final constraint). Recall that, even in Modern German, subordinate clauses must be detached by commas from the verb of the main clause that governs them (or from their antecedent NPs, in the case of relative clauses).

S.


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## Forero

Scholiast said:


> Hearty greetings all round
> 
> My curiosity issues from a discussion (http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2972228&) in the English Forum < ... >.
> 
> For every beginner learning German it is hammered home that in _Hauptsätzen_ the verb occupies second position, and that in subordinate clauses the verb is postponed to the end.
> 
> Has this always been the case (if we go back to OHG, or even further)? If not, then when(ce) did this strict rigidity originate? I ask because there appears to be one (residually Germanic?) phenomenon in modern English which corresponds to the Germanic formula, namely indirect questions, such as:
> 
> "I don't know who the man wearing the black hat and the purple cloak *is*".
> 
> From my intimate knowledge of Latin and Greek, and reading-knowledge of French, Spanish and Italian, I can't find a parallel.
> 
> Thoughts, anyone?
> 
> Σ


The word order in an indirect question in English is subject before verb (the subject being the noun phrase that names what the clause is about), which is not always verb last.

Confusion arises when people treat the word "is" as if it always equated one thing to another. In fact, "is" has several different meanings, and it does not in general express an equivalence relation in the formal logical sense.

"I don't know what dead is" and "I don't know what is dead" do not mean the same.
"I am not your parents" is a sentence about me, and perhaps about responsibilities or expectations, but "Your parents are not me" is a sentence about your parents.
"It is Jim" says one thing, but "Jim is it" says something else. Similarly, "I don't know who it is" says one thing, and "I don't know who is it" says something else.
"I don't know who the man wearing the black hat and the purple cloak is" says one thing, and "I don't know who is the man wearing the black hat and the purple cloak" says something else.


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## Schimmelreiter

May I repeat my earlier analysis that in





Forero said:


> I don't know who the man wearing the black hat and the purple cloak is


_who _is the predicative, and _the man wearing the black hat and the purple cloak _is the subject.

By contrast, in


Forero said:


> I don't know who is the man wearing the black hat and the purple cloak


_who _is the subject and _the man wearing the black hat and the purple cloak _is the predicative.


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## berndf

Schimmelreiter said:


> May I repeat my earlier analysis that in_who _is the predicative, and _the man wearing the black hat and the purple cloak _is the subject.
> 
> By contrast, in
> _who _is the subject and _the man wearing the black hat and the purple cloak _is the predicative.


That would indeed explain the difference in meaning between _I don't know what dead is_ and _I don't know what is dead. _In the first sentence _dead _is an abstract noun and subject of the clause with _the concept of dead_ as referent and in the second sentence _dead _is a predicative adjective.


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## Sibutlasi

berndf said:


> That would indeed explain the difference in meaning between _I don't know what dead is_ and _I don't know what is dead. _In the first sentence _dead _is an abstract noun and subject of the clause with _the concept of dead_ as referent and in the second sentence _dead _is a predicative adjective.



I do not think *_I don't know what dead is_ is a possible English sentence unless _dead_ is used in it metalinguistically, between quotation marks, as in _I don't know what 'dead' is, _where _'dead'_ acts as subject, _what _is the attribute, and the interpretation is 'I don´t know what 'dead' means'. As soon as that correction is made, _'dead'_ refers to *the word *_dead _and has exactly the same properties as any other noun(phrase) acting as a subject_. _In _I don't know what is dead_, on the contrary, the sentence can (although barely) receive an interpretation with _what_ as a subject and _dead_ (in its non-metalinguistic use) as an attribute. Of course, many speakers invert the subject and the attribute in indirect questions, and to that extent _I don't know what is 'dead'_ is also acceptable, but in that case _'dead'_ must be used metalinguistically, it refers to the word _dead_, and the interpretation is exactly the same as in _I don't know what 'dead' is, _i.e., 'I don´t know what 'dead' means'_. _Nothing else in that minimal pair requires further explanation, as far as I can tell.

S.


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## berndf

Sibutlasi said:


> I do not think *_I don't know what dead is_ is a possible English sentence unless _dead_ is used in it metalinguistically


That is exactly what I said ("..._dead _is an abstract noun and subject of the clause with _the concept of dead _as referent").


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## Forero

For me, "I don't know what dead is" refers to dead as a concept, not to the word_ dead_, but it is obviously a noun since it is the subject. It is distinctions like this that disallow moving the verb to the end in every subordinate clause.

In the original sentence, _is_ is at the end because the long noun phrase is its subject and _who_ is its complement. Move _is_ ahead of the long noun phrase, and you change its subject.

I think we all agree actually, except for those who would say moving the _is_ makes the sentence wrong. For me, it just makes it a different sentence because the indirect question has a different subject.

In English, in other words, the word order of an indirect question matches the word order of a relative clause, the same word order as in a statement except for the fronting of the relative or interrogative word. It is not derived from the word order of a direct question, which involves moving the subject except when the subject involves the interrogative word.


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## Dib

berndf said:


> You cannot be sure that _the man_ is the subject of a sentence only because it is the subject of a different sentence. You are over-stretching the reasoning by analogy here. I am not denying that _the man_ can be analysed as the subject but so can _who_.



It may be a bit weird, but analyzing the "who" as the subject is also possible, but it will need the word order "I don't know who is the man". Let me put this into context to make it more palatable. Take the following discourse: "In this world, there are many men - smart and slow, witty and dull, adventurers and couch-potatoes. But then, above all of them there is *the* man. But we never know who among us is that man."

In other words, look at the expected answer to determine whether "who" is the subject or "the man" is in "who is the man?" If it is "The man is John" then "the man" is the subject (as it usually is), but under some circumstances (like the example above), the expected answer may be "John is the man" and then "who" is the subject. And, as shown in the example, they would need two different word orders in the indirect question, though the difference is leveled in direct question.


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