Dick,
There's no question that that-relatives and wh-relatives function similarly, although there is a very subtle and insightful study by Dwight Bolinger titled _That's that_ that discusses the meaning "that" may bring to a relative clause. It's been some time since I read it, but I think I'll have another go at it. It was a very rewarding piece.
The similarity of function, though, is a similarity in clause structure and function. The clauses are modifiers of nouns, that is, have head nouns. They are alike in that they have systematic gaps. Whatever thematic role the embedded noun had in the RC, that spot shows a gap, whether the COMP is "that" or wh-x. The only difference between them is that that-rels have only deletion but wh-rels have deletion and movement. The fact that even the subject position can be empty is demonstrate by island constraint violations in sentences like
*The fries that hamburgers and 0 were served tasted greasy.
That there may be subtle differences in meaning between that-rels and wh-rels is a natural consequence of the fact that both structures exist. This happens when two words arise that are near synonyms. The language finds a way to differentiate them. There will be overlap, but they will be slightly distinct. I've just been dealing with this in another area in a paper I'm just finishing with a couple of grad students. The suffixes -nce and -ncy have a common source in Late Latin present participles like "diligentia". In the 2nd c. the /t/ assibilated producing a pronunciation reflected in the -nc- spelling and in a word like "intelligentsia". But -nce and -ncy now differ in that -nce typically has the meaning of "quality" and -ncy may be either "quality" or "state". The meanings of etymologically identical suffixes are diverging but are not completely distinct. The same is true with that-rels and wh-rels.
But to address the reasons why "that" simply is not a pronoun, again, consider the following:
Rel "that" is always unstressed. Pronominal "that" is stressed.
Rel "that" never exhibits the plural form "those". Pronominal "that" does.
Rel "that" can't take a genitive suffix. Pronominal "that" can't either, but we can get "that one's".
Rel "that" can't occur after a preposition as its object. Pronominal "that" can.
In short. Rel "that" has none of the properties of a pronoun, for the simple reason that it's identical to subordinating conjunction "that". This explanation accounts neatly for the facts. The pronoun analysis presents a whole set of problems that are anomalous.
Herb
Herb,
Still, intuitively, it's hard to see how in the following pair, we are
using "who" and "that" differently.
The boss who hired me ...
The boss that hired me ...
They sure feel like they're interchangeable and performing the same
function. Might it be that they evolved on different historical paths
but that in the mental grammar of the typical present-day speaker of
English have come to be identical in function? If so, wouldn't that
function be that of relative pronoun?
Dick Veit
________________________
Richard Veit
Department of English, UNCW
Wilmington, NC 28403-5947
910-962-3324
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Stahlke, Herbert F.W.
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2005 9:40 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Question re "That" vs. "Who"
Helene,
To expand on my cryptic response to Martha, "that" is the older of the
two ways of starting a relative clause. "Who" doesn't appear in
relative clauses until the 15th century. "That" appears six centuries
earlier. At the time, "that", or its ancestor, was not a pronoun. It
also is not a pronoun in modern English. It is simply a subordinating
conjunction. This addresses directly the question of whether or not
"that" can refer to humans. It's a conjunction. Conjunctions don't
refer to anything. Using "that" in something like "The man that met me
at the airport" is fine because "that" is a subordinating conjunction
and doesn't replace the subject or stand for the subject or refer to
"the man" because only pronouns refer and it's not a pronoun.
The rule that "that" can't refer to humans is a stylistic preference
based on a faulty grammatical analysis. I don't claim to be the first
to argue that relative "that" isn't a pronoun. Otto Jespersen, probably
the greatest grammarian ever in the history of English, argued for it in
great detail in the first half of the 20th century.
I haven't presented the evidence for the conjunction analysis, because
I've done that before on this list, but I'll be glad to if you'd like to
see it.
Herb Stahlke
Another Ball Stater
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