# Я первая увидела!



## vidar

If this sentence is referring to a masculine noun (in this case, *Динозаврик*) why is the adjective *первая *declined in the feminine? Also why is it in the nominative when it is the object of the verb 'to see'?


----------



## Eirwyn

Because it was the speaker who saw the dinosaur, not the other way around. She says she was the first to see it.


----------



## vidar

Eirwyn said:


> Because it was the speaker who saw the dinosaur, not the other way around. She says she was the first to see it.


Yes, as i understand the sentence it's "I saw it first." or more literally "I first saw (it)." - but 'it' is masculine so why is the adjective agreeing with a feminine noun?


----------



## Eirwyn

Eirwyn said:


> Because it was the speaker who saw the dinosaur, not the other way around.


Я [была] первая[, кто его] увидел.


----------



## vidar

Eirwyn said:


> Я [была] первая[, кто его] увидел.


So this is agreeing with the gender of the speaker not the noun being acted upon? Is this baby speak? It is from Peppa Pig so possible.

Sorry but i'm still very confused.


----------



## Eirwyn

I think you still misunderstand this sentence. The word "первая" is agreeing with the gender of the speaker because it's the speaker who is being counted, not the object. She doesn't say the dinosaur was the first object she saw (that would be "Я первым его́ увидела" or "Я сначала его́ увидела"). She says she was the first person among some other people who saw this dinosaur.


----------



## vidar

Eirwyn said:


> I think you still misunderstand this sentence. The word "первая" is agreeing with the gender of the speaker because it's the speaker who is being counted, not the object. She doesn't say the dinosaur was the first object she saw (that would be "Я первым его́ увидела" or "Я сначала его́ увидела"). She says she was the first person among some other people who saw this dinosaur.


No i understand the sentence perfectly. She is stood with others, one of them says 'look, it's there' and she says 'I saw it first.' I don't get how it's working grammatically.

Am i right in thinking that *первая *here is the adjective or is it an adverb? 

The table found on wiktionary for the adjective *первый *shows a table that would dictate how you would modify the adjective to agree with the gender of the noun in question. I don't understand how grammatically the girl is the object of this sentence.


----------



## Awwal12

Note that "первая" here functions as an adverbial phrase and modifies the verb. Being morphologically an adjective, it still needs to be put in the correct grammatical gender if singular (which, in the case of the 1p.sg. personal pronoun as the subject, will be defined by the biological gender of the speaker). An alternative variant is using the adjective in the instrumental case, but the requirements obviously stand anyway (я пе́рвая уви́дела Диноза́врика = я пе́рвой уви́дела Диноза́врика).


----------



## vidar

Awwal12 said:


> Note that "первая" here functions as an adverbial phrase and modifies the verb. Being morphologically an adjective, it still needs to be put in the correct grammatical gender if singular (which, in case of the 1p.sg. personal pronoun as the subject, will be defined by the biological gender of the speaker). An alternative variant is using the adjective in the instrumental case, but the requirements obviously stand anyway (я пе́рвая уви́дела Диноза́врика = я пе́рвой уви́дела Диноза́врика).


Ok so it going with the biological gender makes sense to me. Thanks for that.


----------



## Eirwyn

I don't understand where you even got the idea that an adjective must agree with the subject of a sentence. It agrees with the noun it corresponds to.


----------



## Awwal12

Eirwyn said:


> I don't understand where you even got the idea that an adjective must agree with the subject of a sentence. It agrees with the noun it corresponds to.


In this sentence, however, it *is* the subject, although the adjective isn't tied to the subject directly.


----------



## Awwal12

P.S.: It very much resembles how the gender of predicates is being defined by the singular subject.   As long as the subject isn't a noun or 3p. personal pronoun and therefore doesn't have a grammatical gender of its own, the biological gender of the speaker (for the 1p.sg. pronoun) or the interlocutor (for the 2p.sg. pronoun) comes into play. Compare:
"Я́ вошёл в э́ту ко́мнату." (the speaker is male)
"Ты́ краси́вая." (the interlocutor is female)
"Ты́ мне ну́жен." (the interlocutor is male)
"Я́ могла́ не учи́ть уро́ки." (the speaker is female)
The adjectives which play certain adverbial roles, like in our sentence, define their gender in just the same manner. Compare with the same sentence having a noun subject instead:
Ва́ня пе́рвый уви́дел Диноза́врика.
О́ля пе́рвая уви́дела Диноза́врика.


----------



## nizzebro

I'd add that the instrumental case (первой увидела, увидела первой) is a normal form for this adverbial sense of 'before any other': 'я прибежал первым', 'эта река высохла первой' - instr. only. The nominative case in 'увидела первая' (or 'увидел первый') is rather a special colloquial  expressive usage.

P.S.. Probably the reason for that nominative is a possibility to shorten the sentence to "Я первая!" - then, 'первая' might be indeed seen as a modifier of 'я' - literally it sounds as 'I am the first', ' I am the number one' - which is common for games or competitions, especially among children.


----------



## vidar

Eirwyn said:


> I don't understand where you even got the idea that an adjective must agree with the subject of a sentence. It agrees with the noun it corresponds to.


I didn't? The whole time i've been asking how the adjective agrees with a feminine noun which isn't present in the sentence or even implied since the noun referred to in the sentence is masculine. Had i known that these words change form depending on the gender of the speaker in these situations i would never have been confused since i know how an adjective declension table works when the adjective is tied to a noun and not the person using it.


----------



## Eirwyn

The speaker is the subject of the sentence and the adjective refers to it.  I still don't really understand why anyone would expect it to agree with some random noun just because it is a noun and "я" isn't. Would a sentence "Маша первая увидела динозаврика" raise the same question?


----------



## vidar

Eirwyn said:


> The speaker is the subject of the sentence and the adjective refers to it.  I still don't really understand why anyone would expect it to agree with some random noun just because it is a noun and "я" isn't. Would a sentence "Маша первая увидела динозаврика" raise the same question?


Well we're seeing the problem with the translation method of language learning since in English we would say it completely differently. I understand grammar terminology, I understand the actual sentence and what it wants to convey yet the grammar confuses me because grammatically it's not how i'd expect to describe it in English.

I don't know about your other sentence since i've been studying Russian seriously for about 3 days.


----------



## Awwal12

vidar said:


> Had i known that these words change form depending on the gender of the speaker in these situations i would never have been confused since i know how an adjective declension table works when the adjective is tied to a noun and not the person using it.


Well, since the 1p.sg. pronoun "я" ("I") always denotes the speaker,  he or she naturally will impart their (biological) gender to the relevant parts of the sentence (preterite verbal forms, predicative nouns and adjectives, or, like in our situation, some adjectives playing an adverbial role) whenever "я" is the subject. "Ты" works in the same manner regarding the interlocutor.


----------



## nizzebro

Eirwyn said:


> Would a sentence "Маша первая увидела динозаврика" raise the same question?


Probably no, but "Сью первая увидела динозаврика" would. Or, even better, Никки.


----------



## Eirwyn

vidar said:


> Well we're seeing the problem with the translation method of language learning since in English we would say it completely differently.


Would you say "I saw it first." for both "I was the first person who saw the dinosaur" and "The dinosaur was the first thing I saw" in English?


----------



## vidar

Eirwyn said:


> Would you say "I saw it first." for both "I was the first person who saw the dinosaur" and "The dinosaur was the first thing I saw" in English?


Yes but then we don't decline adjectives in English, and when you read a website saying adjectives are declined for nouns in Russian and then see the adjective doesn't agree with the noun at all, it's very easy to become confused.

You've been suitably unhelpful though, so thanks.


----------



## Awwal12

P.S.: Note that if the central object of the sentence appears in the dative case (we may call it "the dative subject" for the sake of simplicity,  as scholars sometimes do, since it never occurs together with the canonical nominative subject - only some particular types of predicates demand it - and it does take some functions of the canonical subject), it will start to define grammatical genders in the same manner:
_Мне_ *удалось* увидеть Динозаврика _первой_ (the speaker is female).
_Оле_ *нужно* было прийти на экзамен полностью _подготовленной_.
Не *быть* _тебе_ _са́мой умной _(the interlocutor is female).

Please ask if you need help with the syntax of these phrases - or you may return to this type later.


----------



## Awwal12

P.P.S.: Also in some cases the "adverbial" adjectives of the discussed kind may actually refer not to the subject but to some of the objects (depending on the semantics of the predicate and the adjective); in some cases it probably may be even ambiguous. In that case the relevant object will define the gender (quite predictably, in fact):
Я застал Динозаврика расстроенным. (It was Dinosaur who was upset, not the speaker, and so the gender will be invariably masculine.)


----------



## Sobakus

Wow lol, this thread makes even me confused. So here goes the simple explanation:

There are subject complements and object complements. The former adds information about the subject by being a kind of parallel subject, the latter does so for the object.

1) Subject complement: *Masha** is a boxer // Ма́ша - боксёр.*​2) Object complement: *Masha** makes dinosaurs happy // Ма́ша де́лает **диноза́вров **счастли́выми**.*​​1) is a typical case of the copular sentence. Both the subject and its complement stand in the same case (Nominative). This gets a bit complicated in Russian in non-present tenses, when the complement optionally appears in the Instrumental instead: *Ма́ша была́ **боксёром* (the officialese *явля́ется* does that even in the present tense). From what I've observed, English grammar now treats the complement of _is_ as the object, which is why English speakers will incorrectly try to put it in the Accusative.​​2) is a typical case of the causative sentence. This is not the normal turn of phrase in Russian, but it's grammatically correct and illustrative. Here you see the same Instrumental as above, but for the object this time, and it's obligatory regardless of tense.​​So where am I going with this? The OP obviously interprets the English sentence "I saw it first" as containing an object complement, since they want *пе́рвый/first* to agree with the object. Meanwhile in Russian, *пе́рвый* acts as the subject complement.
How does that happen?​The copular sentence *я** - **пе́рвый* gets folded into the sentence *я** уви́дел **его́*, giving *я пе́рвый** уви́дел его́.*​Or, as other replies mention, you can use the Instrumental in this function: *я пе́рвым уви́дел его́*, which can be understood as *я был пе́рвым + я уви́дел его́*.​You can force your brain to see that happening in English as well: *I** was first. I saw it. I saw it first.* But evidently this is not the default interpretation - while folding the sentences, English turns the subject complement into an object complement. Doesn't make obvious sense, but such are the ways of English.​Still, if you ask the question "Who was first?", the answer is "Me (, I was first to see him)" and not "He was first (to be seen by me)".​​Therefore, when the subject who's seeing is feminine, the subject complement *пе́рвый *agrees with it in the feminine: *Я - пе́рвая. Я уви́дела его́. Я пе́рвая уви́дела его́.*​​Here's a fun one that combines subject and object complements:
*Ма́ша пе́рвая сде́лала диноза́вров пе́рвыми = Masha was first to make dinosaurs first*, or if you like, *Masha** made dinosaurs first **first**.*

You might notice that since the Instrumental is obligatory with object complements (*диноза́вров пе́рвыми)* while also being possible with subject complements *(Ма́ша пе́рвой)*, one can theoretically come up with sentences that are as confusing as the English above, given the subject and the object are in the same number and declension type: *я уви́дел его пе́рвым* can theoretically mean "I saw him while he was first" in addition to the default "I was first to see him". This can be somewhat resolved by moving the subject complement immediately after the subject. But you can simply swap the Instrumental for the Nominative instead, and this is what the "colloquial" (not really, it's unmarked) usage does.


----------



## Awwal12

I entirely object to the analysis. "Object" is a type of an argument attached to a predicate (in the broad sense) according to its government model. On the syntactical level an argument may be obligatory or factultative, but it must be always a necessary participant on the semantic level, i.e. must be take a valency in the semantic definition of the predicate. Obviously, ANY verb may attach an adverb (as long as the combination with a particular adverb will make sense, of course), so that kind of attachment isn't predicate-sensitive and adverbial stuctures are rather adjuncts (or adjects at best) than arguments syntactically-wise.  For instance, any verb may attach "yesterday", which automatically sorts out "yesterday" (in the adverbial meaning) as an object; after all, any action necessarily happens at some moment or period of time.

English "first" (like in "I saw it first") as much as Russian "первый"/"первым" (like in "я увидела его первой") are all adjuncts (or "adverbial phrases" in a more traditional terminology, viewing them from the perspective of sentence structure) attached to the predicate, not arguments. Obviously the definition of "видеть" doesn't specifically incorporate the relative order of seeing the stimulus; it only incorporates the experiencer (which takes the role of the subject) and the stimulus (which becomes the direct object in English and in Russian likewise) as arguments.

On the other hand, analyzing "первый" as a part of the noun group (either a subject or an object), which you apparently imply calling it "a subject complement", is impossible, which is especially obvious in English (which is highly projective as languages go), but isn't too hard to prove in Russian too.
1. The relative word order (actually one of the key parameters in defining a constituent). While Russian is highly unprojective and dislocations of modifiers in noun phrases are comparatively frequent, they only occur in specific situations. Now compare:
Первая Динозаврика увидела Маша.
??Та самая Динозаврика увидела Маша.
??Усталая Динозаврика увидела Маша.
2. "Маша первая" taken in isolation actually isn't a noun phrase at all, it can be only a complete sentence containing a zero copula. And "Маша (-) первой" is also a potential sentence, of a highly ellyptical kind. Neither works if we try to use them as a noun phrase not used with some specific verb:
*Маша первая вчера весь день была в парке.
Compare with a true NP:
Взбодрённая Маша вчера весь день была в парке.
As expected, the modifiers aren't relevant for the compatibility between the head noun of the NP and the verb, but it isn't the case for "Маша первая".

The same is applicable for "динозавриков первыми" in just the same manner. It's not a constituent at all. Actually "Маша первая сделала динозавриков первыми" contains a verb, three arguments (a subject, a direct object and the indirect object "первыми"; "сделать" in this meaning necessary implies an additional argument - "cделать кем-л./чем-л./каким-л.") and an adverbial phrase "первой".


----------



## Sobakus

First of all, thank you for engaging with my reply, but in this case I'm not interested in rigid theoretical correctness. As I state in the beginning, it's intended to be "a simple explanation" that's intuitive to English speakers. In order to achieve that goal I picked the explanation that's most widely used for/in English - just Google it - and simply mapped it onto Russian. I went on to conflate the notions of _subject/object complement_ with that of _secondary predicate_, because to my mind (and based on a bit of reading I remember doing a while ago) they're related by a simple transformation that I refer to as "folding". Through the transformation the predication relation remains, but is now secondary predication which imporantly doesn't show the usual verbal characteristics. This is called a _small clause_, I believe. As you say, it's not a single NP. Another related phenomenon is apposition.

I don't claim to have shown some incredible insight in doing this, but not only do I believe this explanation to be intuitively understandable, the relation has been observed and described by others. For a place to start, see the English abstract for this French paper that I've admittedly only barely skimmed, as my French needs a lot of machine-translated assistance: Goes, J. (2008). Les prédications secondes à prédicat adjectival.

I believe that someone who chooses to conflate secondary predication and subject/object complements for the sake of expediency makes no grave mistake in doing so. Together with that article's author, I do think that describing what's going on as mere "adverbial phrases/adjuncts" or saying that they modify the verb misses the opportunity to offer an insight into their relation to other discussed constructions, and more importantly to illustrate that relation on practice using simple transformations that work in both languages.


----------



## nizzebro

Meanwhile, for an hour already, I've been trying to imagine a context where both two 'first' are possible - that is, a person who sees something coming first and,  in the same time, wins the race amongst other watchers. I feel like there's some trap...


----------



## nizzebro

Awwal12 said:


> the indirect object "первыми"; "сделать" in this meaning necessary implies an additional argument - "cделать кем-л./чем-л./каким-л.")


There's some ambiguity in this clause (сделала динозавриков первыми)
Сделала динозавриков первыми существами
Первыми cделала динозавриков и только потом остальных травоядных.

The last sense could be applied to any transitive verb, I guess. My question is,  what exactly does that "первыми' represent, then?

Also, what about the following:
Я убил его ещё ребёнком.
No questions for the sense 'in my childhood". But, in 'in his childhood", what does 'ещё ребёнком' represent functionally, isn't it the same thing, no matter whose childhood is meant?


----------



## Awwal12

nizzebro said:


> There's some ambiguity in this clause (сделала динозавриков первыми)
> Сделала динозавриков первыми существами
> Первыми cделала динозавриков и только потом травоядных.


Ah, true, thanks. I only thought about the first possibility.


nizzebro said:


> My question is, what exactly does that "первыми' represent, then?


Another adverbial phrase (adjunct) then. Note that "сделала" changes its meaning here (from ~"turned into" to "created") and thus has only two valencies.


----------



## nizzebro

Awwal12 said:


> Another adverbial phrase (adjunct) then.


The case of "Увидела их первыми" seems quite arguable to me too.
We can apply первыми to potentially any transitive verb: создала первыми, сломала первыми, захотела первыми.
The underlying sense is 'in the first instance'.
However it is possible to apply the same sense to an intransitive and any verb _itself,_ from the sentence level_: _
Первым делом она поспала, далее она создала динозавриков.
Actually this sentence says "her first action was [поспала] "  (or создала динозавриков).
Continuing this analogy to the level of introductory phrases -
Во первых, она создала динозавриков (, я вам скажу).


----------



## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> Another adverbial phrase (adjunct) then. Note that "сделала" changes its meaning here (from ~"turned into" to "created") and thus has only two valencies.


A basic insight of syntax is that if the meaning is different, the syntax cannot be the same, so первыми cannot be an adjunct in both cases. Not to mention that I don't believe it's possible in principle for an adjunct to display agreement with an argument.

Adjunct: Ма́ша покорми́ла диноза́вров *с руки́* :: Маша покорми́ла диноза́вров, и сде́лала это *с руки́ *
Not an adjunct: Ма́ша покорми́ла диноза́вров *пе́рвыми* :: Ма́ша покорми́ла диноза́вров, и сде́лала это *пе́рвыми *
Adjunct: Ма́ша покорми́ла диноза́вров, и сде́лала это *пе́рвым де́лом *


----------



## nizzebro

Sobakus said:


> Adjunct: Ма́ша покорми́ла диноза́вров, и сде́лала это *пе́рвым де́лом *


I'm curious how would you define *сначала, потом.*

Сначала проехал поезд, потом зазвонил телефон. 

I don't really care if these are adverbials or conjunctions or what else.
What really puzzles me is that these behave the same way as the following:

Она увидела динозавриков первыми, а дракончиков - вторыми.

that is:  [проехал поезд] было первым, а [ зазвонил телефон] - вторым.


----------



## Sobakus

nizzebro said:


> I'm curious how would you define *сначала, потом.* I don't really care if these are adverbials or conjunctions or what else.


Then what kind of definition do you want, if not part of speech (these are plain old temporal adverbs = time adjuncts), and what do you want to do with that definition? Remember that our goal here is trying to help people learn Russian.


> What really puzzles me is that these behave the same way as the following:
> Она увидела динозавриков первыми, а дракончиков - вторыми.
> that is:  [проехал поезд] было первым, а [ зазвонил телефон] - вторым.


If you apply the same transformation as I used above, you'll see that these behave differently. Anyway, I suspect that even the Nominative and Instrumental for the subject complement imply different syntax. That's another reason why simply calling both the subject complement is the right thing to do.


----------



## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> A basic insight of syntax is that if the meaning is different, the syntax cannot be the same, so первыми cannot be an adjunct in both cases.


And does that "basic insight" has any formal grounds? Truly, most typically Russian syntax avoids different arguments with the same morphosyntactical realization in the same sentence (e.g. *Ва́ся кра́сил сте́ну ки́сточкой бели́лами ), but it's hardly the case with adjuncts; while it's somewhat difficult to bring up a lot of good examples considering that adjuncts are rarely represented by bare NPs to begin with, take, for instance, "те́м ве́чером я́ е́хал ле́сом домо́й"; consider also the homonymous prepositional phrases in "я́ е́хал за грузовико́м за грузовико́м" (which obviously may sound weird and clumsy, but doesn't seem to be ungrammatical at all).


Sobakus said:


> Not an adjunct: Ма́ша покорми́ла диноза́вров *пе́рвыми* :: Ма́ша покорми́ла диноза́вров, и сде́лала это *пе́рвыми *


Note that "первым" necessarily demands an overt object in the same clause to agree with. Without that, its usage may be blocked simply by the inability to choose the grammatical form, so the agrammaticality of the sentence above hardly can count as a definite proof.


----------



## nizzebro

Awwal12 said:


> Note that "первым" necessarily demands an overt object in the same clause to agree with. Without that, its usage may be blocked simply by the inability to choose the grammatical form, so the agrammaticality of the sentence above hardly can count as a definite proof.


I totally agree.
Basically there's a conflict between the informational structure and the syntax. The notion of "первый" is the actual theme that is to be modified:
Первая, кто увидел их - Маша.
Первые (существа,) увиденные ей - динозаврики.
But, as long as первый is a gender- and number-dependent form, it has to "pre-load" its inflection.
Actually, it's quite ridiculous - because "Первая, кто..." actually doesn't imply any "gender filter" as "the first female who...".


----------



## koper2

I understand that the pronoun *Я* is genderless without the context. The inflection of the adjectives *первый *and* первая *identifies the gender of *Я *as masculine and feminine respectively_._


----------



## Awwal12

Regarding the concept of subject complement in general and its applicability in our case:
1. That's basically a concept of English grammar, usefulness of which cross-linguistically is doubtful - because actually nothing prevents us from analyzing it as a particular kind of argument;
2. It is, by definition, a predicative expression attached to the copula, which basically sorts it out in our case (уви́дела is not a copulative verb of any kind at all).


----------



## koper2

Awwal12 said:


> Regarding the concept of subject complement in general and its applicability in our case:
> 1. That's basically a concept of English grammar, usefulness of which cross-linguistically is doubtful - because actually nothing prevents us from analyzing it as a particular kind of argument;


Modern English grammar doesn't refer to predicative complements as the subject complements. Complements of the verbs _be_ or _become_, for example, are predicative ones, not subjective ones. The modern English grammar describes those complements as ascriptive (or subject oriented) or as specifying complements in predicate, i.e. complements in the verb phrase, not complements of the subject (a noun phrase or a clause).

Ascriptive use of the verb _be_:
_Harry is a teacher_. (The predicative complement, _a teacher_, denotes a property that is ascribed to _Harry_.)

Specifying use of the verb _be_:
_The last man to leave the ship was the captain_. (The predicative complement, _the captain_, specifies _the last man to leave_.)


----------



## nizzebro

koper2 said:


> _The last man to leave the ship was the captain_. (The predicative complement, _the captain_, specifies _the last man to leave_.)


But isn't it an infinitive phrase though (that acts as a noun one)? I used to think of a verb phrase as that with a finite verb.
I frankly cannot see a huge difference between these two sentences - whether we add some more details about a man called Harry, or we add some more details about a man who was the last one to leave the ship (profession of him, in both cases).


----------



## koper2

nizzebro said:


> But isn't it an infinitive phrase though (that acts as a noun one)? I used to think of a verb phrase as that with a finite verb.
> I frankly cannot see a huge difference between these two sentences. Either we add some more details about a man called Harry, or we add some more details about a man who was the last one to leave the ship (profession of him, in both cases).



The traditional grammar refers to _a teacher_ and _the captain_ as the subject complements and treats the verb _be_ as a linking verb. The modern grammar sees _a teacher_ and _the captain_ as complements in the verb phrases (predicates) _is a teacher_ and _was the captain_ where _is_ and _was_ are heads of the verb phrases respectively.

The difference is in syntax, not in semantics. There isn't the notion of linking verb (copula) and there is no subjective complement as it is in traditional grammar; the both predicate complements are firmly 'anchored' in the verb phrases _is a teacher_ and _was the captain._


----------



## Awwal12

koper2 said:


> The traditional grammar refers to _a teacher_ and _the captain_ as the subject complements and treats the verb _be_ as a linking verb. The modern grammar sees _a teacher_ and _the captain_ as complements in the verb phrases (predicates) _is a teacher_ and _was the captain_ where _is_ and _was_ are heads of the verb phrases respectively.
> 
> The difference is in syntax, not in semantics. There isn't the notion of linking verb (copula) and there is no subjective complement as it is in traditional grammar; the both predicate complements are firmly 'anchored' in the verb phrases _is a teacher_ and _was the captain._


Nizzebro seemingly just wondered if "_the last man to leave the ship_" is an infinitive phrase rather than a noun phrase. Still, in English it must be a NP (with the noun modified by the infinitive phrase "_to leave the ship_"); the criterion of endocentricity and the semantic criterion both point at "man" as the head here. And the only finite verb here is "was", directly connecting two NPs.


----------



## koper2

Awwal12 said:


> Nizzebro seemingly just wondered if "_the last man to leave the ship_" is an infinitive phrase rather than a noun phrase


It is a noun phrase in which the non-finite infinitive clause modifies the head of the phrase "man". In other words, it is an understood noun phrase whose head is modified by the relative clause: _the last man who left the ship._


----------



## nizzebro

koper2 said:


> It is a noun phrase in which the non-finite infinitive clause modifies the head of the phrase "man". In other words, it is an understood noun phrase whose head is modified by the relative clause: _the last man who left the ship._


No problem; the reason for my confusion was the fact of two sentences given - I thought those were given as opposed to each other.

I think that it is basically the right idea, to consider [_is a teache_r], as well as  [_was the captain] , _units (irrespective of the general concept of any kind of hierarchical analysis, which purposes I do not understand).


----------



## Awwal12

nizzebro said:


> I think that it is basically the right idea, to consider [_is a teache_r], as well as [_was the captain] , _units


Actually, in English any verbal phrase (which also incorporates the objects and some adverbs) has been proved to be a real, objective constituent. It may not be so cross-linguistically, though; at least in Russian nothing points at the existence of such units.


----------

