Seth,
That's one of the arguments I didn't go into. There is a hierarchy of grammatical relations that governs all sorts of movement and deletion processes across languages, called the Keenan-Comrie Accessibility Hierarchy. Here's an example from the Wikipedia article on the KCAH, which is worth reading:
Subject That's the man [who ran away]. The girl [who came late] is my sister.
Direct object That's the man [I saw yesterday]. The girl [Kate saw] is my sister.
Indirect object That's the man [to whom I gave the letter]. The girl [whom I wrote a letter to] is my sister.
Oblique That's the man [I was talking about]. The girl [whom I sat next to] is my sister.
Genitive That's the man [whose sister I know]. The girl [whose father died] told me she was sad.
Obj of Comp That's the man [I am taller than]. The girl [who Kate is smarter than] is my sister.
Notice that "that" can occur in prepositional phrases only if the preposition is stranded. "...to that I was talking" is not possible. Also, the genitive, as I pointed out earlier, does not allow "that." These are precisely the positions in which asyndetic relatives are also ungrammatical. There is an extension of this in colloquial speech and in non-standard dialects where the gap in the relative clause is filled by a resumptive pronoun. These occur in genitive and comparatives especially, although they'll also occur in more complex constructions. An example would be "?I'd like you to meet the poet that we read a lot of her work last year." We certainly would not allow that in formal writing, but it's not at all unusual in speech.
The comparative marker "than" acts a lot like a preposition in English, and so if we combine it with prepositional phrases, which in this version are collapsed with indirect objects, then what we see is that asyndetic relatives are blocked only at the lowest level of the hierarchy, Genitives. The fact that "that" can't be dropped if the gap is in subject position is a separate phenomenon that is related to language processing needs. Otherwise that-deletion in noun clauses and in relatives is pretty much the same rule. That-relatives and zero-relatives then fall together into one subclass of relative clauses that behave differently from wh-relatives.
This distinction between that- and wh-relatives reflects the history of the language. Historically, English had only the that-type and asyndetic relatives, although the subordinator was "tha" rather than "that." This is a reflection of the strongly paratactic structure of Old English: not a lot of subordination but lots of main clauses in sequence, sometimes conjoined by "and." Old English did not have wh-relatives until the Late Old English period when they developed probably from indefinite relatives under the influence of Latin, which the scribes of the time knew well. In Latin, relative clauses had to be formed with relative pronouns fully inflected for gender, number, and case. After the Norman Conquest, when the tradition of Alfred the Great's English scriptoria was suppressed, wh-relatives also disappeared and didn't reappear until the late 13th c. when, once again, Latin influenced writers borrowed the structure from Latin. Wh-relatives even today are more strongly a feature of educated standard English than of non-standard dialects, which use that- and zero- relatives much more. In fact, wh-relatives are still so much a function of formal education and of Standard English that when non-standard speakers attempt to use the wh-pronouns to initiate clauses they frequently use them in unusual ways, as in sentences like "We were going to have a picnic Saturday, which it rained." Such wh-coordination is not at all uncommon in spoken non-standard dialects.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Katz, Seth
Sent: Friday, December 17, 2010 3:04 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Noun clauses
Hey, Herb--
Thanks for recapitulating the argument for that being just a subordinator and not a pronoun. You always make me think. A lot. A nice break from grading.
Unless I am misunderstanding you, I would note an exception to a claim you make. You say
* It is deletable, like the subordinator "that" and unlike pronouns.
But the wh-pronouns are deletable in adjective clauses, when the pronoun fills the direct object role in the dependent clause, as in
The woman whom you met this morning is an old friend of mine.
The woman _____ you met this morning is an old friend of mine.
Am I missing something in what you said?
Happy end-of-semester--
Seth
Dr. Seth Katz
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Bradley University
Faculty Advisor
Bradley University Hillel
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Stahlke, Herbert F.W.
Sent: Fri 12/17/2010 12:45 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Noun clauses
John,
We've had some extensive discussion in past years on the status of "that" in clauses like these. There has not been complete agreement on all of it, but here's the position I've taken, which is also the position of Otto Jespersen in his A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles and Huddleston & Pullum in their rather more recent Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.
There are two function words "that" in English. One is the distal demonstrative "that" with its plural "these," and the other is the subordinator "that" as found in the clauses you have provided. When "that" is used to introduce a relative clause, it is simply a subordinator, not a relative pronoun. The relative pronouns are the wh- words. This analysis implies that there is a gap in the relative clause corresponding to the head noun, so in "The pitches that Casey missed..." the gap is in direct object position where "pitches" would be if the relative clause were a main clause instead. If it's the subject that is zero, most speakers require "that" to avoid processing problems that arise when a second finite verb occurs in a sentence without any overt marking that it is in a subordinate clause, so in "The ball that got past Casey was a strike" the dropping of "that" would leave "The ball got past Casey was a strike" which some speakers will use but writers will avoid. The fact that "that" is required there for clarity is not evidence that it's a relative pronoun but simply a restriction on bare or asyndetic relative clauses.
There are several reasons for calling "that" a subordinator in all of its non-demonstrative uses.
* It's always unstressed, as is the subordinator "that." Pronominal and determiner "that" are rarely unstressed.
* If it were a pronoun in relative clauses, then we would expect it to have a plural "those" in "*The pitches those Casey missed...."
* There is no possessive form, although there is for wh- relatives, so we can't say "*The ball that's casing came off...."
* It is deletable, like the subordinator "that" and unlike pronouns.
There are more argument, and I recommend the treatment in Huddleston & Pullum. There is also a very thorough critique of this analysis by Johan van der Auwera in Journal of Linguistics 21 (1985), 149-179 titled "Relative that - a centennial dispute. It's a fascinating, thoughtful, and incisive critique.
Herb
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Chorazy
Sent: Friday, December 17, 2010 12:21 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Noun clauses
Hello to all... I've been talking with students (11th grade) about clauses and have collected some questions that the list might have some thoughts on.
The use of "that" as the head of a noun clause (and subject): "That the healthcare system needs fixing is obvious."
"That" used in an adjective phrase: "Unlike the cat that slept all day, the dog ran around and barked."
And if we can get some insight to the following use of "that": "Lynn Margulis' theory that evolution is a process rather than a competition differs dramatically from the theories of most biologists."
Are the last two simply restrictive clauses using the relative pronoun?
Also (a bit different) - anyone care to parse the following? "Should you have any trouble identifying the house, just remember that it has a big brass knocker on the door." Students see the implied "you" as the subject and its verb remember, but not what's going on up front.
Thank you very much!
Sincerely,
John
John Chorazy
English III Academy, Honors, and Academic Pequannock Township High School
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