Bruce,
I'm not sure yet that a three-way distinction works. The demonstrative we agree on. Here are the differences you outline between 2 and 3:
2 has only one morphological manifestation, occurs at the beginning of a content clause which may include appositives.
3 occurs at the beginning of an adjective clause, always restrictive, conjunction may be omitted
Here are my problems. 3 also has only one morphological manifestation, so 2 and 3 are alike in that. 2 may be omitted, as in "I know it's late," so they're alike in that. Appositives (2) may start with "that". Huddleston&Pullum (p. 1052) note that, in what they call "supplementary relatives", their term for non-restrictives, "that" is allowed, as in
February, that in other years held intimations of spring, this year prolonged the bitter weather.
She had long been accustomed to the solitary nature of her son's insticnts, that I had tried--and failed-to stifle.
2 and 3 are thus alike in appositives may start with "that".
That fact that one kind of that-clause identifies and another classifies is not a function of the "that" but of distinction between complement and modifier, which is why I'm uncomfortable with noun clauses after verbs, nouns, and adjectives as appositives. They're complements, not modifiers, and appositives are modifiers.
Your claim that "(3)is typically an intergral part, yet as object can be omitted" begs the question. It assumes that (3) is a pronoun, but there is no evidence to support this claim. That-relatives in English, like relatives in a lot of languages, involve deletion of the embedded coreferent. In some complex cases a resumptive pronoun shows up, although English typically doesn't like resumptives. But consider
Here's a book that I know the guy who wrote *0/it.
Deletion would result in an island constraint violation. The resumptive, while inelegant, makes the sentence grammatical. The fact that a pronoun can appear in its in situ position is pretty strong evidence that "that" isn't the pronoun.
The that of a that-relative is identical to the that of a noun clause. It's deletable, it's morphologically invariant, and it doesn't occur in places where a pronoun can, like after a preposition. 2 and 3 are indistinguishable.
Herb
Herb,
Maybe Occam (Ockham) would object, but I don't have a problem with three
"that"s.
1) The demonstrative. This appears before nouns. It also has a pronoun form
for use without the noun. There are four distinct morphological instances of the
demonstrative: this, these, that, those.
2) The conjunction for a noun clause. This is the variety of noun clause
often called a content clause. There is only one morphological manifestation.
The noun clause may appear in virtually all the functions of a noun. The
appositive (adjectival) was one function under recent discussion.
3) The conjunction for an adjective clause. This is the variety of adjective
clause used to identify rather than describe or classify. It is always
restrictive. The conjunction is sometimes omitted in this kind of clause.
The demonstrative appears as a pronoun. The idea of my last post is that you
could argue that the conjunction of the noun clause (2) can be seen as being
used as a pronoun as the connective for the adjective clause (3). The
morphology of (2) and (3) is identical. The syntax is quite different: (2) is
independent of the clause it introduces, whereas (3) is typically an intergral
part, yet as object can be omitted. The fact that (3) functions in its clause as
a part of it in the same way as a noun would do in an independent clause
formulation seems to make it pronoun-like. Hence, the stretch that one might be
justified in calling (3) a pronominalized version of (2).
It is of some interest here with regard to pronunciation that the conjunction
than was often indistinguishable from then in 17th Century England and is
still so in many dialects. As conjunctives the first is a relative adverb of
the degree clause while the second is either a relative adverb of a temporal
clause (subordinate clause) or an illative conjunction (co-ordinate clause).
The second form is also much like the demonstrative as an adverb. Thus we have
three morpho-syntactic forms of similar syntactic distribution as that, but here
they are adverbs.
Hope this helps.
Bruce
>>> [log in to unmask] 3/10/2005 7:17:50 PM >>>
Bruce,
Interesting arguments! Jespersen treats comparatives similarly and also
reports and describes the use of "as" to introduce a relative clause, as in
cases like
"not as many as I thought 0" and the less common "anybody as 0 wants to".
You're right that my first three arguments apply more strongly to the question
of whether relative "that" is the demonstrative pronoun. But consider the
alternative. If my arguments don't apply to relative "that", then we have
THREE, not two "thats", the conjunction that introduces noun clauses, the
demonstrative pronoun, and the relative "that". But the relative "that" behaves
morpho-syntactically like the conjunction, not like the demonstrative, so
there's little reason for positing the third.
"Pronominalizing subordinating conjunction"? I like that. Just think the
potential it gives us as a model for naming lexical categories!
Herb
Herb,
Perhaps your argument could be made stronger if you mentioned that certain
adverb clauses are also relative, without having to be connected with a
pronoun.
In this case, however, someone might want to argue for a pro-adverb, so maybe
it doesn't help after all.
John is taller than George.
John is taller than George is.
John is taller than George is tall.
The connective "than" refers to the degree of George's height, comparing
John's
height to it. It is relative by referring to the same thing that the -er is
referring to, the degree of John's tallness.
Your argument for "that" not being a pronoun seems only to show that it isn't
the pronominalized demonstrative "that," at least in the first three points of
the previous post. Perhaps we can view it as a "pronominalized subordinating
conjunction."
Bruce
>>> [log in to unmask] 3/10/2005 12:41:42 PM >>>
Craig,
I don't think anyone questions whether wh-words are pronouns. That much is
pretty clear. The problem is with "that". The morpho-syntactic evidence is
overwhelming that relative "that" is not a pronoun and is a subordinating
conjunction, that there is, in fact, no difference between the "thats" in
I know that it's raining.
and
The rain that's falling now will flood the fields.
They're the same thing. The claim that "that" in relative clauses is a
pronoun
is a claim grounded in a school grammar tradition that is seriously flawed in
many ways, this being one of them. When you say "that is a pronoun in some
camps and a complementizer in others when it functions within a relative
clause," you beg the question. "That" in a relative clause has no function
within the clause. It simply introduces it. It is not subject, object, OP,
or
anything else. Those relationships are marked by the absence of a noun phrase
in the appropriate position, not by "that".
Content clauses and relative clauses are similar in that they are both
embedded
sentences. They differ in that content clauses are complements of verbs,
nouns,
or adjectives and that relative clauses are modifiers of nouns. It is the
modifier relationship that leads to the structural gaps exhibited by relative
clauses but not by content clauses.
I don't think the problem of appositives has anything to do with the analysis
of "that". Rather, it has to do with the ill-defined nature of the term
appositive. Here are some examples.
1. My brother Bill ...
2. Bill's statement that he was in Chicago at the time ...
3. Bill, who lives in Chicago, ...
4. Chicago, hog butcher to the world, ...
5. Bill's party, scheduled for last night, ...
6. The idea that Bill lives in Chicago ...
etc.
At best, appositive is a function, not a structure, and I'm not entirely sure
that it's a function. I think rather that it's a traditional term used to
describe a disparate variety of structures all of which occur after nouns. It
has some usefulness if used with care. Calling 1,3,4,5 appositives doesn't
bother me much, but including 2 and 6 does. I think they're different
structures, complements to their head nouns rather than modifiers, and calling
them appositives just confuses matters.
But this is where poorly defined traditional grammar terms get us.
Herb
Herb,
I know we have gone back and forth on this one before, and I'm still not
convinced, but I think it may be important to clarify that there seems to be
agreement that there is such a thing as a relative pronoun (who, with its
various forms, and which, when functioning within these adjectival clauses),
but
that is a pronoun in some camps and a complementizer in others when it
functions
within a relative clause. We tend to agree that it is a complementizer in noun
clauses precisely because it clearly has no role within the noun clause.
I'm wondering whether you see any difference between a content clause
structure and relative clause structure. (Are these the same structures, but
differing in context by function?) The argument for these as appositional
seems
to hinge, at least for me, on the sense that that functions differently. Is
the
notion of appositional noun clause somewhat dependent on the misunderstanding
of
the role of that as pronoun, at least as you see it? Should we discard the
category?
Craig
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