we now turn to the concept of an embedded sentence an embedded sentence is a
sentence that is placed inside of a larger sentence here we have some
examples of ASL embedded sentences
first we have this notice that there are basically two full sentences here
you gave me a book and I read a book but the sentences are combined together with
one sentence the book that you gave me being the topic and the other sentence
being the main sentence i read it
secondly we have this example in that sentence the topic is he will give me
the money
but the main sentence is I know - I know that he will give me the money
here we have another introduced with a rhetorical question
I want you to leave
and then finally we have a an embedded sentence that's a question sentence
embedded inside of another sentence that's affirmative
I wonder who that man is how do we get to these structures how do we decide
what to put where
well if you think of embedded sentences as objects within a main sentence
it turns out that is helpful because objects can be left where they are in
regular sentences or objects can be topicalized and moved to the beginning
of a sentence
so if you see sentences like amber thinks that Mike should leave then you
have the option of leaving that sentence in a very similar format to what you
have with the subject verb
amber thinks and then Mike should leave or of moving the object to the
front as a topic
the same with John said that Mary is smart
you can leave the object in the end or you can move it to the front
the last sentence Octolanda lost the money that you lent me get a little more
complicated because the money that you lent me really requires a topic anyway
and because of that we're going to need to put that in the topic so we don't
actually have a choice of where to put the object
in the last sentence because there's already a topic required
so the last sentence we're going to have to move that object to the front which
means since the object is a whole sentence
we're gonna have to move the whole sentence to the front nonetheless
thinking of embedded sentences in terms of subject verb object is very helpful
for knowing what you should sign we'll return to these just a minute and I'll show
you some examples of how they could be signed
so if you're looking for some rules to think about
then perhaps these will be helpful an embedded sentence can be left where it
is in the sentence just like an object can be left where it is at the at the
end of the sentence provided that it's not known to the listener if the
information in the embedded sentence is what you're trying to say then it makes
sense to leave the embedded sentence at the end
this is going to make a sentence that looks very much like an English sentence
that's okay the embedded sentence could also be brought to the front as a topic
if the embedded sentence includes information that's already known to the
listener
that is if I'm not going to tell you that i am happy that you came
you already know that you came to the meeting or whatever i'm happy about
so therefore i would probably say you came as a topic because it's known to
you and then I'll tell you what you didn't know which is that I'm happy
about it
so you can move that embedded sentence to the beginning
provided that it has information that's already known to the person you're
talking to
and then finally the embedded sentence could be introduced by rhetorical
question
this is especially true if you're going to emphasize whatever that part of the
embedded sentence is remember rhetorical questions give the most emphatic
information because they move all that information to the very end of the
sentence which is the place of emphasis in ASL
so going back to the sentences that we have here
amber thinks that Mike should leave we have some options
we could leave it in the subject verb object word order in which case you
would have something like this
but remember even that embedded sentence Mike should leave could have things
moved around in it that sign should that auxillary verb could be moved to the
end
so you could still have a sentence that's not quite like the English
sentence that would look like this again
the next example John said that Mary is smart
you can leave that just the way that it is especially if that Mary is
Smart is what you're trying to emphasize alternatively with the first two
sentences you could make the object a topic
so if the object is already known to the person you're talking to you can move
that to the beginning of the sentence and then you would have something like
this
the second sentence
the last sentence of course is a little bit less flexibility and that is because the
the money that you lent me is the sentence itself that is going to become
the topic of the sentence Octolanda lost because it's not that
Octolanda lost - you lent me money but it's money that she lost and because
money is what she lost what we want to do is we want to put information behind
the money so we want to make that sentence an object the money that you
lent me and then say that
Octolanda lost it and so that sentence would would go something like this again
so remember you have these three options when considering what to do with an
embedded sentence leave it where it is
move it to the front of the topic or introduce it as a rhetorical question
so I have that last option of introducing any of these embedded
sentences as rhetorical questions that would look something like this
remember
when you use rhetorical questions to introduce these embedded objects or
these embedded sentences that makes the sentence very emphatic
so you should use those rhetorical as a rhetorical questions very sparingly