Re: Relative Pronouns - the Chinese angle

I'm more confused than ever, but the pair that fascinate me are:

--the street where you live

v

*the place where is exciting

As I have very little top-of-my-head to go on (fine hair is such a
curse), I'd say just that the first is an attempt
to be more precise about the street, while the second is describing
the place. There is only one street where
you live, but there may be many exciting places.

Upon reflection I also wonder if this is to do with the Chinese
familiarity with verbs which look (to us) like adjectives.
Alas, I am so tired right now that I can't remember the term for these
things. In English we can't make 'where you live' into an adjective
and
say 'the where-you-live street', but we can say 'the exciting place'.
Given that Chinese doesn't use 'is + adj' the way English does, this
may in part contribute to
the confusion of your Chinese ESOL teachers on this point.

Peripherally, I must refer to my own bafflement when learning that in
French, one sometimes uses 'where' (ou, sorry for missing accent mark)
where an English
speaker would use 'when'. Having spent so much time being told that
French is more precise than English, this was worrying. I have since
learnt to go with the
flow, but have to remind myself every time such a structure comes up.

And you might be ever so slightly relieved to know that 'I am asking a
ludicrously complex question to prove I'm knowledgeable' phenomenon
isn't limited
to ESOL courses for teachers. We see it all the time at one of
projects which is designed to help small businesses work out a
strategy for
dealing with their intellectual property rights. Invariably any
workshop we hold will have one or two people in it who want to discuss
the niceties of the latest
patent law developments in X country's court system [insert footnotes
here], whilst our speakers are trying to talk about how to decide if
it's worth even
thinking about registering a trademark... .

Courage!

cheers,
Stephanie in Belgium
.

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