Craig,

I don't think any of this belongs in an undergrad grammar class, although in mine I do treat "that" as a conjunction and have a handout that lays it out nicely.

But here are the problems with your position:

That in relatives is not only not a demonstrative pronoun (I wasn't arguing that), it's not a pronoun at all.

The deletion of that is a single rule, not two.  Since the coreferential NP in the relative clause deletes under identity with the head NP, it deletes in all positions, including subject.  This is true with wh-relatives as well, by the way.  The fact that we can't say "Here are the fries which/that a hamburger and 0 were sitting on the counter" indicates that there is deletion in subject position, but this deletion is blocked by a coordinate structure, what John Ross called the Coordinate Structure Constraint.  There is a perceptual constraint on the deletion of that when the subject of the RC has been deleted under coreference, and that is that for most speakers the verb of the RC then becomes the main verb and the rest of the sentence doesn't parse.  However, for many speakers, "This is the guy 0 met me at the airport" is grammatical.  The constraints governing that-deletion are subtle and complex, but they're laid out in some detail in Bolinger's _That's that_ and in Huddleston&Pullum.

We have a long grammatical tradition of in which relative that is treated as a pronoun, but it's not a unanimous tradition, and the best of traditional grammarians, like Jespersen, have presented strong cases for rejecting the position.

Herb

Herb

Herb,
   When I mentioned that which and who are pronouns, I was just trying to clarify the discussion a bit for anyone who wasn't around the last time. It was an attempt to reaffirm agreements.
    I'm still getting a little stuck not seeing content clauses and relative clauses as having slightly different structures and slightly different deletion rules.  Here's my current attempt to muddle through.  (In passing,. I'd like to say I do see three forms of "that" at work.  That in a relative clause is certainly not the demonstrative pronoun. I was never trying to argue for that.)
For a content clause, deletion is possible if the clause follows the main verb, quite often a mental process verb, in traditional direct object slot, and that is, as I see it, because the main clause verb is already explicit.  I believe that she loves me.  I believe she loves me.  Both are very clear and highly grammatical.  And I can make the same clause subject.  That she loves me is believable. In this case, though, deletion isn't acceptable.  I can't say She loves me is believable.  In this case,  I thank that is because loves seems to be the main verb, but turns out not to be, and the language requires or expects us to make that explicit ahead of time.  In other words, we need the that to render the clause explicitly subordinate.  It is clearly not a pronoun in any way, shape or form because it has no grammatical role within the clause itself. The that is also required if the clause shows up as a complement to a head noun.  My belief that she loves me....  We can't say My belief she loves me is wrong.  The that is required to subordinate or complementize the clause.  It's not a pronoun, again, because it has no role within the clause. Here, I think, we are in deep harmony.
    For relative clauses, though, we have a slightly different deletion process.  I can say everything that she touches or everything she touches, and the deletion doesn't give us problems.  I can say Everything that touches her touches me, but  not everything touches her touches me.  The only way to explain that is to say that the clause seems to require an explicit subject, not at all an issue with content clauses because the "that" never remotely resembles a subject. (Without going into detail, the rule works well with which and whom as well.  There's no deletion when they act as subject.) If that is subordinator or complementizer in these clauses as well, then I am forced to say that we need a complementizer to fill the subject slot because relative clauses won't allow us to leave that slot empty.  The reason many of us are balking at this (I don't think it's just the bad habits of the old grammar) is that the that looks and feels like a pronoun when it does.  Unlike the that in a content clause, it seems to be filling a grammatical role.  
     We need to say that relative clauses cannot delete their pronoun or complementizer when there is no [other] subject explicitly rendered.  It's a problem that simply never arises with content clauses.  If the that acts in place of the subject and is not a pronoun, then we have to say there are relative clauses in which a subject never appears.  This is a different frame of reference than I am used to. (And I have to admit that I am warming up to it a bit as I go.) The other problem, of course, is in deciding how much of this would just be a distraction in an undergrad grammar course. That is certainly different in some ways and similar in some ways to the  (other?) relative pronouns.  The big  question is if it's sufficiently different to call it something else.  If not, then we certainly need to assert that relative that and demonstrative that are not the same. To me, content clause that and relative clause that differ as well, at least in terms of deletion.  In some way that never happens with content clauses, it takes on the look and feel of a pronoun.
    I hope all this makes sense.  This time through, I think we are more elegant in the disagreement. (I can't think of anyone I would rather engage in this way; I suspect one way or another to learn from it.)

Craig

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