Adverbial Nouns in the News


How do you approach grammar teaching in your school. Literal Minded is a step in the right direction.


Listening to the various news stories observing the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, I heard one reporter talking about a commemoration going on in Dallas. She said,

The ceremonies will take place at the very location he was killed.

In my grammar, location doesn’t work this way. I can say either of the following:

  1. the location in/at which he was killed
  2. the location where he was killed

The clause he was killed ___ contain a prepositional-phrase gap (shown with an underscore) where you might ordinarily expect at that place, or in that place, or maybe just there. This gap corresponds to the relative phrase in/at which or the relative adverb where. Somewhat less good are:

  1. the location that he was killed in/at
  2. the location he was killed in/at

In these phrases, the clause he was killed in/at ___ contains a gap where you’d ordinarily expect…

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