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I am confused that a use that is seemingly grammatical doesn't sound right.

  1. That our cattle are ailing is worrying.
  2. I find that our cattle are ailing worrying.*
  3. Has anyone said of that our cattle are ailing thus: "..." ?

1 sounds perfectly fine, 2 has to be intonated correctly to make sense, and 3 sounds questionable to me. I have no opinions on what qualifies as grammatical or whether sounding okay to a speaker is equivalent to grammaticalness, I only really want a second opinion.

Similar sentences with "whether" instead of "that" are fine, even if the meaning only slightly changes, but I think that's because "that" serves other roles frequently, causing confusion. Sorry if correct-soundingness doesn't warrant a post here.

* 2 could also have an ambiguous reading: the cattle could be sick from worry, if intonated differently.

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  • I'd certainly want 'the fact that' in (2), and prefer it in (1) also. (3) just about becomes conscionable with 'the facr that' if you drop the 'thus'. But not idiomatic.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jun 18 at 22:08
  • @EdwinAshworth hi thank you. I deliberated over "the fact that" for a while. The issue is that I'm translating poetry from a very distant language and "the fact that" doesn't flow at all in my case, which is what inspired my example 3.
    – capyman1701
    Commented Jun 18 at 22:18
  • 'Has anyone said of that our cattle are ailing thus: "..." ?' doesn't sound like an inviting translation of a technical screed, never mind poetry.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jun 18 at 22:45
  • @EdwinAshworth you're right, severe case of tunnel vision on my part. I've sat with these sentences for so long they sound much more normal to me than they should. Thanks again.
    – capyman1701
    Commented Jun 18 at 22:55
  • 'The disease amongst our cattle is alarming' sounds more natural if hardly in a poetic register. But please leave the question as is: it's brought out some very important grammar.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jun 19 at 14:09

1 Answer 1

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The problem is that you're treating declarative content clauses (declarative finite subordinate clauses) as noun phrases - they're not, and they aren't allowed everywhere NPs are allowed.

  1. Subject in complex-intransitive (linking consturction with no object and a subject-oriented predicative complement) - allowed

  2. Object in complex-transitive (linking construction with an object and a object-oriented predicative complement) - not allowed, must be extraposed (replaced by it and moved to the end of the clause)

I find it worrying that our cattle are ailing.

  1. Object of preposition of - not allowed

If you have them as complement of a noun, say news, then they are part of a noun phrase and the problem disappears.

  1. The news that our cattle are ailing is worrying.

  2. I find the news that our cattle are ailing worrying.

  3. Has anyone said of the news that our cattle are ailing thus: "..." ?

Interrogative content clauses (interrogative finite subordinate clauses) on the other hand can occur in complex-transitives, and as the complement of certain prepositions in combination with appropriate words such as say of, ask about, inquire as to. Their syntactic properties are much closer to, but still not identical to, noun phrases.

  1. Whether our cattle are ailing is worrying.

  2. I find whether our cattle are ailing worrying.

  3. Has anyone said of whether our cattle are ailing thus: "..." ?

The subtle differences between the types of subordinate clause cannot be explained by simply lumping them all into the noun phrase category.

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    Very good. Just needs a reference.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jun 19 at 11:53

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