ecargo10 Jan 2003

Oh--yes, now I see. You're omitting the subordinating conjuctions (that) to two restrictive clauses [i.e, "(that) the parsons nose [lubricated]" and "(that) the pirate procured"]. I can't tell from your example above whether you are using "which" to introduce a restrictive or nonrestrictive clause ("that was lubricated by the parson's nose (which the pirate procured)"--if the former, fine; if, however, it's a nonrestrictive clause (i.e., "that was lubricated by the parson's nose, which the pirate procured"), you can't arbitrarily omit both the comma that would indicate that it is a nonrestrictive clause and the "which." (Anyway, because of the ambiguity resulting from your sentence construction, your omission of the subordinating conjuctions, while acceptable in many cases, would be considered unacceptable usage by certain grammarians--see, for example, Theodore Bernstein's _The Careful Writer_).

In order to omit the subordinating conjunctions ("that" or the restrictive usage of "which, which is still acceptable usage, particularly in Europe), I believe the clauses must be restrictive. To be considered restrictive, those clauses must be essential to the meaning of the sentence. If you mean "The shoehorn that the parsons nose that the pirate procured lubricated glistened," you seem to be implying that there is more than one parson's nose and you specifically mean the one that the pirate procured and that there was more than one shoehorn and you specifically mean the one that the parson's nose lubricated. Is that the case? I'd like it better if you changed it to "The shoehorn the parson's nose, the pirate, procured lubricated glistened" but then we'd be back to procuring a lubricated shoehorn, which is against the law in any number of locales.