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when toggle format what by license comment
Jul 16, 2015 at 4:57 answer added rogermue timeline score: 0
Apr 16, 2015 at 20:27 history edited jvriesem CC BY-SA 3.0
Added my best guess
Apr 16, 2015 at 20:13 history edited jvriesem CC BY-SA 3.0
deleted 31 characters in body
Apr 16, 2015 at 20:09 answer added Greg Lee timeline score: 1
Apr 16, 2015 at 20:04 comment added John Lawler Well, it's an imperative, so it's missing a subject. And embedded question complements don't diagram well, I'm afraid. Sentence diagramming really only works for short sentences without subordinate clauses; the kind you see in first and second grade and never again after that, except in grammar class.
Apr 16, 2015 at 19:48 comment added jvriesem @John Lawler: Totally. It's an easy mistake to make! I'm still curious how the sentence would be diagrammed if it was "Simply describe what the data that you collected are."
Apr 16, 2015 at 19:47 history edited jvriesem CC BY-SA 3.0
Gave context for the sentence.
Apr 15, 2015 at 18:49 comment added John Lawler It looks like the author (this sentence was never spoken) started to make an embedded question complement of describe (Describe what you collected) and then decided to add the data that you collected, making it clearer what was what, and then forgot to delete the original what. That happens all the time when editing, as everybody here probly recognizes.
Apr 15, 2015 at 18:16 comment added StoneyB on hiatus You're right, the sentence is ungrammatical. If you append are you end up with a fused relative clause what [they] are in which what plays the role of predicate complement.
Apr 15, 2015 at 18:13 review First posts
Apr 15, 2015 at 18:43
Apr 15, 2015 at 18:13 history asked jvriesem CC BY-SA 3.0