Tuesday, May 23, 2017

conjunctions - Can I omit "that" in the following case?



She had eyes so far apart from each other that looking at them made me feel dizzy.



Can I omit the that in this case? Why and why not?



Answer




She had eyes so far apart from each other that looking at them made me feel dizzy.




No, you cannot drop the subordinating conjunction that here. A subordinating conjunction is necessary to connect the two parts of the sentence.


Sometimes a subordinating conjunction can be dropped, but not in this case. Usually we omit a subordiating conjunction after a "reporting verb" like to tell, learn, discover, feel etc.:



She had eyes so far apart from each other! I told her (that) they made me feel dizzy. I really felt (that) they made me dizzy.



Had it been a relative pronoun, you also could've dropped it:



I felt dizzy looking into those beautiful eyes (that) she had.



Here, we can omit the relative pronoun that because it serves as the object of the relative clause "that she had".




She had what? She had [that]. (She is the subject, that is the object)



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