Bill,
That would be a good question to post to ADS-L. The thread continues.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C
Sent: 2008-12-30 18:31
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Zero and "that" relatives
Thanks Herb!
I was left wondering if the increase in "that" in the period from the 30s to the 70s might have anything to do with a reduction in the extent to which people believed they *had* to use wh-forms instead of 'that'. I suppose it's possible that the incidence of overt relativizers stayed the same, but a greater proportion of them were 'that'. Even a stylistic shift away from fronted prepositions ("about whom we were...") in the relative clause could have that result.
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
Sent: Mon 12/29/2008 10:10 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Zero and "that" relatives
From time to time we've discussed the various types of relative clauses in English ("wh-", "that," zero, infinitival, etc.). The topic has come up recently on the American Dialect Society list. I've copied a recent thread below detailing, among other things, changes in "that" and zero usage over the past half century. Because I didn't ask the permission of the participants before copying this material, I've removed all personal identifiers. If you'd like to continue to follow the discussion, you can do so at http://www.americandialect.org/index.php/amerdial/ads_l_the_american_dialect_society_email_discussion_list/ by subscribing to the list or by following the instructions to the Linguist List archive of the ADS-L site.
This discussion is also an interesting example of how contemporary linguistic grammarians think and work.
Enjoy!
Herb
I know I'm coming into this a few days late, but ...
>> i found the "that" a bit jarring, and would have preferred a zero
>> relative:
>> "With the market and everything being the way it is ..."
>> a google search (with dupes removed) pulled up:
>> {"being the way that it is"} 270 hits
>> {"being the way it is"} 845 hits
Data from the 100 million word TIME Corpus (http://corpus.byu.edu/time), comparing:
[nn*] that he/she [p*] [v*] +that e.g. '(the) car that he/she bought'
[nn*] he/she [v*] -that e.g. '(the) car that he/she bought'
You can see a sustained decrease in the use of "that" (vs. zero) with relative clauses during the past 40 years (see http://www.americancorpus.org/charts/relatives.xls). It looks like the use of 'that' in relatives has decreased about 50% during this time.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ... Data from the 100 million word TIME Corpus (http://corpus.byu.edu/time
>> ), comparing:
>>
>> [nn*] that he/she [p*] [v*] +that e.g. '(the) car that he/she
>> bought'
>> [nn*] he/she [v*] -that e.g. '(the) car that he/she bought'
>>
>> You can see a sustained decrease in the use of "that" (vs. zero)
>> with relative clauses during the past 40 years (see http://www.americancorpus.org/charts/relatives.xls)
>> . It looks like the use of 'that' in relatives has decreased about
>> 50% during this time.
>
> about 40% decrease between the 1970s and the 2000s. following an
> approximately 60% *increase* between the 1930s and the 1970s. i
> have no idea what to make of either of these developments.
>
> The decrease since the 1970s makes sense -- others have noted a
> shift towards zero with both relatives and as verbal complementizers
> (I know (that) Fred will get here today) in both contemporary
> British and American English. The increase in "that" (or, decrease
> in zero) during the preceding 30-40 years is somewhat more
> problematic. Prescriptive pressure, which died out / lessened in the
> 1960s/1970s?
Begin forwarded message:
>
>> The decrease since the 1970s makes sense -- others have noted a
>> shift towards zero with both relatives and as verbal
>> complementizers ... in both contemporary British and American
>> English.
>
> this just says that usage changed for complementizer "that" as well
> as relativizer "that". it doesn't say why the usage should have
> changed. of course, sometimes things just change. in this case, i
> suspect that the growing preference for zero over "that" is part of
> a larger pattern of change in favor of more coversational and
> informal variants (seen also in the increase of "that" vs. "which"
> in restrictive relatives, which has been occurring even without
> pressure from copyeditors).
>
> it *is* significant that others have noted the shift towards zero.
> otherwise, we might have suspected that the shift was specific to
> the editorial practices of Time magazine.
>
>> The increase in "that" (or, decrease in zero) during the preceding
>> 30-40 years is somewhat more problematic. Prescriptive pressure,
>> which died out / lessened in the 1960s/1970s?
>
>
> well, actually the decline apparently started in the 1980s. but the
> effect of lessening prescriptive pressure could have been delayed
> some.
>
> but the levels of "that" were low in the 1920s-1940s (lower than in
> the 2000s, in fact). is there any reason to think that prescriptive
> pressure increased in the 1950s-1970s?
>
> here it would be nice to have data from a source other than Time, to
> find out whether the change was the result of changing editorial
> practices at the magazine.
>
> > but the levels of "that" were low in the 1920s-1940s (lower than in
> > the 2000s, in fact). is there any reason to think that prescriptive
> > pressure increased in the 1950s-1970s?
> >
> > here it would be nice to have data from a source other than Time, to
> > find out whether the change was the result of changing editorial
> > practices at the magazine.
My feelings exactly. It might be hard to extrapolate the Time data to
journalistic usage more generally, since the magazine has been so
stylistically idiosyncratic over the years. Most notorious is their
"inverted syntax," which was finally phased out in 2007:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/12/business/media/12time.html
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
|
