Hi Maryam,

To be clear, it creates an adverbial clause / meaning, but “whatever” is not actually used as an adverb, but a determiner which denotes the meaning “it’s not important what [noun]” – as you say, whatever modifies path, to create an overall meaning of “regardless the path chosen”. This works as a phrase that essentially means “whatever we do” / “whatever option is chosen”, or from an adverb perspective “regardless the path / regardless the choice”. To clarify the structure though, it does also fit in the same way as a regular relative clause: you could replace it with a more specific relative clause which would fit the sentence in the same way. For example, if we were to say “Although we have chosen a possible solution, the first step is to acknowledged the complexity of the dilemma”.

Does this help? I do have a habit at looking at structures in more than one way, so hopefully haven’t overcomplicated it…

Phil

I know about adverb clause that starts with the words like if , although , because, when. and they are dependent upon independent one .so if we take whatever as adverb then what about the word path.
Path here is noun and whatever is modifying it
Whatever path

Hi Maryam,

This is what we’d call an adverbial clause; it’s a clause with a verb and subject but it is dependent, so it doesn’t work on its own. The phrase creates an adverbial meaning, so fits into the sentence in the way an adverb would do – hence at the beginning of the sentence it is there with a comma. In this case, it behaves structurally as if you used an adverb like “Nevertheless” (and in meaning somewhat similarly, the meaning here being like “whatever the case”.

I hope this helps.

Phil

Hello sir,
I don’t understand this statement structure and word order.

Whatever path we take

if it is part of sentence ,then why is comma used to separate it from the full clause. More over if it is adjective clause defining head noun path then where is the main verb . Because adjective clause can’t stand alone.

Full sentence:

Whatever path we take , the first step is to acknowledged the complexity of the dilemma and to accept that simplicity dividing the past into good guys and bad guys leads nowhere.

Hi Lisa, sorry for the slow reply – I think I need to double-check this one but I’d say that as an object the defining clause should be in a statement form, so the subject comes before the verb, whereas the other option, the reversal, is for a question. As it is not a direct question, the verb wouldn’t be reversed. I.e. It’s “They will find out [object as a statement].” not “They will find out [question].”

Thank you Umar, I’m glad it was useful!

I’m going to tell my friends about this site.

Thanks.