Davidson’s article is one of a number of pieces that have recently appreared making the point that the reason we have such stubbornly high unemployment and declining middle-class incomes today is largely because of the big drop in demand because of the Great Recession, but it is also because of the advances in both globalization and the information technology revolution, which are more rapidly than ever replacing labor with machines or foreign workers.
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这句话可着实不算短,它的嵌套结构也不可谓不多。句子的主干实际上是很简单的主系表结构“Davidson’s article is one of a number of pieces”后面的一长串东西都是因为修饰前面这个“a number of pieces”才产生出来的。围绕着这个名词结构,后面跟着两个形容词性结构,一个是定语从句“that have recently appreared”,被修饰的名词在后面的定语从句中做主语,这个不是很难。但后面的现在分词结构“making the point”同样是修饰“a number of pieces”而存在的。这种同性质的修饰结构直接罗列在一起在英语中实际上还是很常见的。出现了“point”这么有料的东西,那么后面自然要加一个句子好好解释解释这个“point”到底包含了什么,故一个“that”引导的同位语从句应运而生了。而这句话最复杂的部分也就在这个同位语从句里。这个同位语从句是一个并列句(从后面的but就能看出来),第一个并列分句的主干是“the reason is largely because of the big drop in demand because of the Great Recession”。“we have such stubbornly high unemployment and declining middle-class incomes today”这一长串都是“reason”的定语从句,只不过关系副词“why”在“the reason”后面被省略掉了。第二个并列分句中对名词“advances”有一个定语“in both globalization and the information technology revolution”,在这个做定语的结构中存在着一个常用的并列结构“both and”。后面的“which”引导的非限定性定语从句修饰的就是前面的“advances”。这个定语从句的语序也有一些特殊化,它的正常语序更加偏向“which are replacing labor with machines or foreign workers more rapidly than ever”。句子的时态实际上是正在进行时,最后这一部分“more rapidly than ever”是个时间状语,表达句子的的动作正在以比以往更快的速度发生。