Herb,
One piece of the problem that bothers me is that marking the subject with zero anaphora (if your analysis is correct) never happens with a content clause or adverb clause or any other relative clause.. In every other instance I can think of, finite subordinate clauses carry explicit subjects. Your point seems to be that this is an exception to that pattern, and that is certainly possible. But it's hard to get my mind wrapped around it,maybe because, as you say, I approach it from the composition side.
I understand the place holding pattern in a sentence like "It is easy to love you." Are you saying we need such a placeholder in relative clauses to fulfill the need to mark presence of displaced subject? As with pronouns, we search for that meaning within the discourse context? It seems so close to doing what a pronoun does--marking a syntactic slot to be filled with meaning recoverable from elsewhere. In the "it is easy to love you..." you can see where the process is motivated by extraposition with information flow and emphasis in play.. Here, we have a different kind of motivation.
When I look at linguistic grammars, as I do rather constantly, I do find myself looking for understandings that will help illuminate discourse,and the nature of effective texts. I look for pedagogical applications. and i find myself drawn to approaches--corpus, cognitive, functional--that don't draw such isolating lines around what constitutes syntax. Many of the arguments in more formal approaches seem to be distractions, even misleading at times, since they routinely ignore the real world context that language inevitably inhabits.
My apologies for getting off on the soap box. I'm happy to disagree with such an agreeable guy. You always treat me with respectful patience, and this is no exception.
Craig
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Stahlke, Herbert [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2013 10:59 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: relative "that" revisited
Craig,
I think a difference in how you and I look at the question arises from the kind of linguistics we do--not our theoretical stances but what domains of linguistics we think in terms of. In your example, "The first song that moved me was a ballad," the distinction I make is not whether "that" is a subordinator or a pronoun but whether the subject of the clause is marked by zero anaphora or by a pronoun. If "that" is a subordinator, as the syntactic evidence argues, then the subject is zero, and we have zero anaphora. This is not a distinction I would come even close to making in a writing classroom, but if I want to understand how relative clauses work in English and how they compare with relative clauses and relative pronoun systems in other languages, then distinctions among subordinators, pronouns, resumptive pronouns, and zero anaphora become essential. For the purpose of teaching English grammar, I want these distinctions, because English uses them all in certain types of construction. For the writing student, calling relative "that" a pronoun works fine and even suggests that the student might understand something about relative clauses and pronouns.
Herb
Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of English
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
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From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Hancock, Craig G [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2013 8:26 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: relative "that" revisited
Herb,
the following will probably seem overly esoteric to most on list, but I have been thinking of these issues since we last talked them out.
I have been reading in American pragmatism, and this might be one of those arguments they would dismiss because it has no practical consequences. I don't think we disagree about how "that" acts in these different contexts. I think it's more a matter of where we draw the boundaries with our definitions. You want me to accept the fact that a complementizer (subordinator) can stand in as a subject substitute (placeholder?) in a relative clause, and I see that as something only a pronoun can do. But being a pronoun is a name I am giving it, and if we draw those lines differently, we can just agree to disagree. We are just making an argument about how to use a term, not a meaningful observation about how language acts.
I also grow impatient with approaches to grammar that imply there are strict rules about how language can act. Grammar is sustained and created through use, and there are plenty of instances where language use is hard to characterize. This is one.
To both of us, "that" is clearly a complementizer in content (noun) clauses.
"I believed that she was telling the truth."
Because of that, it can easily be followed by a demonstrative pronoun "that" functioning as subject.
"I believe that that was true."
If I say "My belief that that was true led me into mistakes," I would agree that the first "that" is complementizer, the second a demonstrative pronoun. I would also make the case, though, that this is actually a content clause acting as appositional modifier. It mimics content clause in its structure.
A third case, though, is different. "The first song that moved me was a ballad." "That moved me" seems to me a relative clause here, not least of all because it can't be preceded by a "that". (The first song that that moved me was a ballad."*) We also can't say "The first song moved me was a ballad" because relative clauses seem in all instances to require an explicit subject.
We also have this version: "The first song, that moved me greatly, was a ballad." Or "The first song, which moved me greatly, was a ballad." Again, in these non-restrictive versions, we can't delete the "that" or the "which" and we can't add a "that."
You can certainly make the case that "that" in relative clauses acts in very unique ways. Arguing about what category it MOST resembles seems to me worth the time, but not if we think it's necessary to draw lines in one single way.
I would compare it to Huddleston's argument that subordinating conjunctions should be thought of as prepositions. At a certain point, the decision becomes arbitrary. Once you make it, it expands the range of application of the term but doesn't materially change the world it tries to describe. It's a distinction without practical consequences.
Craig
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From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Stahlke, Herbert [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2013 3:07 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: relative "that" revisited
Craig,
Rather, the first that is the subordinator, and the second that is the subject.
Herb
Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of English
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
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From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Hancock, Craig G [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2013 12:42 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: relative "that" revisited
Herb,
You can make the case that "consequences that that would entail" is syntactically different. It construes the second "that" as standing in for another agent and the first "that" as standing in for "consequences" as direct object or copular complement. In other words, something other than consequences is doing the entailing.
"The consequences that would ensue" construes "consequences' as doing the ensuing.
"The birds that would leave."
"The birds that that would leave."
Very different meanings.
Craig
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Karl Hagen
Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2013 11:13 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: relative "that" revisited
I wonder whether the garden-path reading, which found myself making too, is prompted by the prosody of the sentence.
Subordinator "that" is by default unstressed, while pronoun "that" typically is stressed, and depending on the prior word, we can be pushed one way or another (in the absence of knowing the intended syntax of the whole clause) based on prosodic considerations (avoid stress clash and runs of unstressed syllables). For me at least, a word like "consequences" (stress pattern /x\x) encourages the following "that" to be pronounced with stress, which in turn suggests a pronoun interpretation until we get to the verb and realize that syntactic frame doesn't work. On the other hand, if I the prior word is something like "effects" (x/), I don't find myself drawn to the pronoun interpretation: "with all the physical and moral effects that would ensue."
Karl
On May 8, 2013, at 7:28 AM, Bruce Despain wrote:
> Herb, Sergio, et al.,
>
> I experienced the same primrose path. It is interesting that the omitted relative pronoun "that" is the default interpretation. I think that Sergio's suggestion that it be supplied by "which" rather than an ambiguous "that" would be a better choice. Thus the two-"that" situation is avoided.
>
> There is another similar haplology with the content clause introduced by the indefinite pronoun "what." What the cleft-sentence paraphrase brings about is an extra "is" that people seem uncomfortable with (like the two-"that" situation).
>
> "What the problem is is there are too many cooks."
>
> When indefinite pronoun "what" is omitted, though understood like the relative "that," the two-"is" situation becomes even more apparent:
>
> "The problem is is that there are too many cooks."
>
> The desire is is to reword it so that they do not come together:
>
> "The problem is this: that there are too many cooks."
> "The problem: there are too many cooks."
>
> Or, they say simply,
>
> "The problem is--there are too many cooks."
>
> Perhaps some people catch themselves saying the two-"is" version because their brain has generated the construction without a careful edit, and, thinking it is wrong, they omit one of them. The pause seems significant, or is this just my dialect playing tricks on me?
>
> Bruce
>
> --- [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> From: sergio <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: relative "that" revisited
> Date: Wed, 8 May 2013 07:42:28 +0200
>
> Dear Dr. Stankle,
>
> I might be missing the point and for the sake of my better
> understanding, I was wondering whether a simple substitution test is
> possible here.
>
> "He avoids whatever roads might cross this desolate valley and stays
> on the open land, so there's no risk of turning a bend and ramming
> head-on into innocent motorists, with all the physical and moral
> consequences that(replace it with "which") would ensue."
>
> Therefore in "...with all the physical and moral consequences WHICH
> would ensue", the original "that" is a relative pronoun referring to
> "all the physical and moral consequences" and subject of "[THEY=the
> consequences] would ensue". It is not a subordinating conjunction as
> in, "I think that they would ensue"
> because here "which" cannot substitute "that".
>
> Does this make any sense?
>
> Sergio Pizziconi
>
> 2013/5/8 Stahlke, Herbert <[log in to unmask]>:
>> I came upon an interesting "garden path" sentence today in Dean
>> Koontz's One Door away from Heaven (Bantam 2001), p. 287.
>>
>> "He avoids whatever roads might cross this desolate valley and stays
>> on the open land, so there's no risk of turning a bend and ramming
>> head-on into innocent motorists, with all the physical and moral
>> consequences that would ensue."
>>
>> When I got to the last three words, I anticipated that "that" would
>> be a pronoun referring to "turning a bend and ramming head-on into
>> innocent motorists," and I expected a verb like "entail." However, the verb "ensue"
>> stopped me cold and forced me to reread and interpret "that" as a
>> subordinating conjunction. We've discussed that status of "that" in
>> relative clauses at some length, and I've taken the position that
>> it's not a pronoun but rather a subordinating conjunction with no referential function.
>> In this case, one could write, "that that would entail," but Koontz
>> is a better writer than that. The choice, however, is between a
>> demonstrative pronoun and a subordinator. The fact that they can be
>> used together supports the claim that they are two different words
>> with very different functions. Very likely the preference for only
>> the demonstrative in this case, rather than both, is an example of haplology.
>>
>> Herb
>>
>> Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
>> Emeritus Professor of English
>> Ball State University
>> Muncie, IN 47306
>> [log in to unmask]
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