Example with a context (Java: A Beginner's Guide, 6th Edition by Herbert Schildt):
I noticed that read( ) returns –1 when the end of the file has been reached, but that it does not have a special return value for a file error. Why not?
While it's perfectly clear what the sentence says, I find this particular sentence pattern a bit confusing and somewhat unnatural. I don't know why though. Perhaps it is because that this kind of grammatical structure is not commonly used. From my experience, I can definitely say that I don't see this one very often. Every time I read this sentence, the sentence, for some reason, sounds incomplete, like there's information missing from it and my brain tries to add that missing information back in after the second clause to conclude the thought, like this:
I noticed that read( ) returns –1 when the end of the file has been reached, but that it does not have a special return value for a file error is very strange since similar functions in other programming languages do. Why not?
What can you say about this problem? Could you maybe do a grammar analysis of the sentence for me?
Best Answer
Try interpreting the grammar in the sentence like this:
I noticed that read( ) returns –1 when the end of the file has been reached, but I noticed that it does not have a special return value for a file error. Why not? I know that the repetition of 'that' in the original sentence doesn't sound very convincing but it's unavoidable in the case where the author wants to specify explicitly that he noticed this as well as that.
Let's take a look at a simpler example: 'I noticed that he did his maths homework but didn't do his physics homework.'
This sentence follows the pattern: ' I noticed that he did this but didn't do that.' Here, we can very comfortably say that 'I noticed that he' is for both the phrases, 'did this' and 'didn't do that'. That's because the sentence is short. Probably, the author thought that in the long sentence that he is framing, people will be left with the notion that 'he noticed this but not that' or that he noticed only the (first part of the sentence). By adding is very strange since similar functions in other programming languages do you aren't making the sentence look better because that extension is disturbing the 'noticed that this is ...but (noticed) that this isn't' structure. Hope that helps!