Herb,
I agree, that the elisions are not necessarily to be restored to make the utterance effective in communication. But it seems to me that they do enlighten as to the semantic underpinnings and logical structure (loose as it may be). The use of "Saturday" in one clause as an adverb which is then modified by an adjective clause like it were a noun, but then the adjective clause using it as an adverbial modifier requires some simple gyrations. It seems that the grammatical underpinnings are still intact. The full logical expression is not part of the repertoire of the speaker, but the underlying semantic relationships are there. The hearer needs to reconstruct the full logical semantic structure and may be at a loss about what it is. Fortunately the external situation, the context of the speech act, allows the hearer comes to understand the expression, even though it may not be fully parsed. I think that if the hearer were to irritate the speaker by repeating back the full logically constructed sentence to the speaker with, "Do you mean, . . . ?" the speaker would say, "Of course. Why do you ask?" There is no ambiguity, just loose constructions with gaps that the situation fills in. I don't believe the hearer would want to "correct" the expression, but he might think, "I would say that differently."
The model of TG theory has such words present in underlying representation. There are presumably transformations that delete the elements that don't appear in an utterance. I don't mean to propound TG theory, but I do mean to look at the semantics as the major driving force in determining the syntactic structure that we should assign to the corresponding expression. If we can draw parallels with constructions that we are familiar with, then perhaps we can identify the changes that are being made to these assignments. My feeling is that this use of "which" is not meant as a highfalutin substitute for "and" but simply as a way to connect adverbs to adjective clauses in certain cases. Can we still state those cases in syntactic terms or only in semantic terms? Maybe the hearer interprets it as "and" and uses it more indiscriminately. I think that this new use will still be "rule driven." Where different words are used, different meanings are attributed. So eventually the newer meaning of "which" for "and" spreads to other situations, possibly supplanting other constructions that are semantically related (but how?). The analogy is not conscious, but perfectly natural. This kind of change can be seen in phonology through time, from speaker to hearer, as accents are developed. Some level of understanding is maintained, even though the means of expression, and eventually whole systems, are changing. If we replace the initial "h" in certain accents of England, we would come across as "formal." Replacing the final "r" might have a different effect (archaic?).
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2009 12:22 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: which we're going to get through this
Bruce,
I've wondered about such elisions, but the sentences you get when you restore the putative elisions have a formal quality to them that the speakers I've heard the construction from would not use. I recognize that hypercorrection is a very powerful concept to apply to a problem like this and is difficult to demonstrate. It's essentially an analogical process, a common process of language change, but analogy can be posited and equations written with empirical proof of the analogy usually somewhere out of sight. So calling it hypercorrection doesn't tell us a lot. It does tell us, however, that speakers who did not learn wh-relatives from educated parents and peers and did not stay in school long enough for such things to become important will attempt to emulate the use of which--and do it inaccurately.
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 Bruce Despain [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: June 4, 2009 10:23 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: which we're going to get through this
Herb,
My impression is that the construction you are looking at is the result of certain elisions that the interpreter may have difficulty restoring. This is not to say that the construction is not reanalyzed as a co-ordination, just that perhaps it was not originally intended to be. Consider the possibility that the original was meant as "We may have to postpone some promises, which (if we do) we're going to get through this."
Perhaps your other example has elisions of the definite reference: "We were going to go on a picnic (last) Saturday, (on) which (Saturday) it rained." I was reminded when seeing these sentences of the surprisingly common omission of elements of an adverb clause contained within a restrictive adjective clause: "She sent a letter which unless we get back, must ruin them both." - (Jespersen. A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles, Vol. IV. 1931. P. 202) The complete omission of the adverbial element, tempting when it is so close to its antecedent, runs the risk of losing the connection of the adjective clause to that antecedent: and behold, a new interpretation and a correspondingly new syntactic analysis -- grammaticalization in action.
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
Sent: Wednesday, June 03, 2009 10:46 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: which we're going to get through this
I posted the following on the American Dialect Society List ADS-L, and I'm cross-posting to ATEG in hopes that some of you may have run into this curious construction and may be able to shed some light on it.
There are a couple of TV ads on currently featuring a working-class
guy telling his family, in one, and his son in the other, that he may
get laid off. In the family ad he saiys something like "We may have
to postpone some promises, which we're going to get through this."
Those are not the exact words, but the use of "which" is as he uses it
in the ad. I suspect the usage may be employed by the writers as a
marker of class, and I've heard it before in sentences like "We were
going to go on a picnic Saturday, which it rained." I don't remember
hearing it used much by college educated speakers. The social
contexts have been working class.
Wh-indefinite pronouns or question words started to show up as
relative pronouns in the 10th c. under the influence of Latin, but
with the demise of English as a written standard after the Norman
Conquest, the shift disappeared until English once again became a more
widely used written language in the late 13th c. The wh-relatives
came into literate, educated English between about 1300 and 1600, with
a few changes in usage after that. The King James Version (1611)
translates the first phrase of the Lord's Prayer as "Our father which
art in heaven," but since about the 18th c. "which" has not been used
to refer to humans.
The usage of wh-relatives does seem to be related to level of
education, and I wonder if the use of "which" as a sort of
coordinating conjunction, as above, might be a hypercorrection.
Speakers who don't have the professional class rules governing "which"
know that some people use "which" in ways in which they themselves
don't. The "which" plus coordinate clause construction arises as an
unsuccessful attempt to emulate those rules. Treating these sentences
in this way is a WAG. I've searched the ADS-L archives for postings
dealing with "which," and I found the usual "that" vs. "which"
discussions, quite a few of them in fact, but none dealing with the
coordinating usage. Does anyone know of scholarship that deals with
this construction?
Herb
Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of English
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
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