grammer question on predication?

Question

The reason for the cat’s illness is because she was allergic to the dog.
how would you rewrite this.
Can you explain to me about predication in grammer to where i can undersatnd it I am not sure .

Answer 1

"The reason for the cat’s illness is because she was allergic to the dog."

That is incorrect. One of the common errors is to use "the reason...because" - it should be "the reason...that".

What you want to say is (reason) = (she was allergic). Try diagramming it.

Reason (the) (for (illness (the cat's))) | is ...?

If you stick "because (she | was \ allergic)" there, it becomes a modifier to "is". You still haven't said *what* the reason is, you just said *why* there is a reason. "Because she was allergic to the dog, there is a reason for the cat's illness." That makes sense in some twisted way but it's definitely not what you intended.

Now the word "that" turns a clause into something you can use as a noun. "I didn't appreciate that you ran around by yourself." The object, the target of the non-appreciating, is "that you ran around by yourself." Or take "I loaned him the car on the assumption that he wouldn't crash it." The object of the preposition is "assumption", and "that he wouldn't crash it" is an appositive that renames the assumption.

So you want a that-clause to use as the direct object. You need to say what the reason is. Rewriting the sentence a bit, you want to say "The reason for the cat's illness is her allergy to the dog." Allergy (hers and to the dog) is the direct object here.

So you write, "The reason for the cat's illness is that she was allergic to the dog."

reason (The) (for (the cat's illness)) | is \ {that | she | was \ allergic (to (the dog))}

Now you finally have something after the "is", the predicate nominative, something that can be equated with "reason".

Apologies for my poor sentence diagrams but I really don't feel like drawing them in a nice program. ;-)

Answer 2

The cat's allergy to the dog caused the cat's illness. All I can tell you is that the original sentence is really messed up. The reason is because?? bleh.

Answer 3

What Are you taking about? It looks to me like the damn cat is allergic to the dog so get rid of the CAT!! That's what i would do...And Guess what lady? You heard it here first from a REAL Nutcase!!!"""NUT'S"""..PS ...did i win...did i win...did i win???

Answer 4

My cat became ill due to him/her being allergic to the dog.

Being that sissy(insert your cats name) is allergic to our dog, she became very ill.

Answer 5

don't know wat your talking about