Clauses of Place

There appears to be only one way of introducing such clauses, and this is by means of the relative adverb where, and in a very few cases by the phrase from where. For instance,.. .Miss Dotty insisted on looking into all the cupboards and behind the curtains to see, as she said, "if there were any eyes or ears where they were not wanted." This way of indicating the whereabouts of "eyes or ears" serves to characterise it by referring to a situation expressed by the subordinate clause, rather than to indicate the precise places meant. Then go where you usually sleep at night. Here the room where the person addressed is asked to go is characterised by what takes place there.

Here is an example of a prepositional where-clause denoting place in the literal sense of the term: From where he stood, leaning in an attitude of despair against the parapet of the terrace, Denis had seen them... The clause from... the terrace denotes the place from which the action of the main clause (Denis had seen) was performed. Occasions for this particular way of denoting the place of an action appear to be rather rare.

The number of sentences with an adverbial clause of place is negligible as compared with those containing an adverbial clause of time. The cause of this is plain enough. It is only in exceptional cases that the speaker or writer deems it necessary to denote the place of an action by referring to another action which occurred at the same place. In the vast majority of cases he will rather indicate the place by directly naming it (at home, in London, at the nearest shop, and so forth). Sentences with adverbial clauses of place are therefore used only in cases where the speaker or writer avoids naming the place of the action, or in sentences of a generalising character, or again in sentences where the place is perhaps hard to define and the name is unimportant.

Clauses of place can also be used in a metaphorical sense, that is, the "place" indicated may not be a place at all in the literal meaning of the word but a certain generalised condition or sphere of action. This of course is made clear by the context, that is, by the lexical meanings of the other words in the sentence. Compare the following sentences. Wherever the choice has had to be made between the man of reason and the madman, the world has unhesitatingly followed the madman. Both the adverb wherever and the meaning of the sentence as a whole show that not a concrete place but a general review of conditions is meant.

Proverb: Where there is a will there is a way