· Tina is a writer who writes short stories.
(中):Tina 是一名寫短篇故事的作家。
(這裏 who 的意思是:‘上文的那個人’。)
這裏突出了英文和中文的很大分別。Relative pronoun 與 Pronoun (代名詞)不同;中文也有 Pronoun,就是 ‘他,她,我們… ’等字,而 Relative pronoun 則是‘上文的那個…’ ,如上面一句那樣,在句裏起了承上接下的作用。
· The Queensland government today withdrew its threat to punish councils that ask ratepayers to vote on a controversial scheme proposed by the state.
(中):昆士蘭州政府今天取消要懲罰地區政府的恐嚇,之前有地區政府要求納稅人投票表決州政府提出的一個備受爭議計劃。
在這例子裏有兩點值得一提的:
1. 作為 relative pronoun, ‘that’ 是和 ‘which’ 相通用,即是這句亦可以寫為:
The Queensland government today withdrew its threat to punish councils which ask ratepayers to vote on a controversial scheme proposed by the state.
有時 ‘that’ 和 ‘which’ 互相替用可以避免文字上的單調,如:
This is a list of items that I am aware of which were in the car when it was stolen.
(中):這是我所知當車被偷時在車裏的物件的清單。
2. 句尾:… merger scheme proposed by the state. 這裏 ‘proposed by
the state’ 之前有兩個字是隱蔽了的,英文句子有這樣的權利。其實整個分句應是 ‘… merger scheme which was proposed by the state.’
‘which was proposed by the state’這一分句是用來形容 ‘merger scheme’ 的,我們將來會適當地解釋這些分句。