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
Stahlke, Herbert F.W. wrote:
>Craig,
>
>I don't think anyone questions whether wh-words are pronouns. That much is pretty clear. The problem is with "that". The morpho-syntactic evidence is overwhelming that relative "that" is not a pronoun and is a subordinating conjunction, that there is, in fact, no difference between the "thats" in
>
>I know that it's raining.
>
>and
>
>The rain that's falling now will flood the fields.
>
>They're the same thing. The claim that "that" in relative clauses is a pronoun is a claim grounded in a school grammar tradition that is seriously flawed in many ways, this being one of them. When you say "that is a pronoun in some camps and a complementizer in others when it functions within a relative clause," you beg the question. "That" in a relative clause has no function within the clause. It simply introduces it. It is not subject, object, OP, or anything else. Those relationships are marked by the absence of a noun phrase in the appropriate position, not by "that".
>
>Content clauses and relative clauses are similar in that they are both embedded sentences. They differ in that content clauses are complements of verbs, nouns, or adjectives and that relative clauses are modifiers of nouns. It is the modifier relationship that leads to the structural gaps exhibited by relative clauses but not by content clauses.
>
>I don't think the problem of appositives has anything to do with the analysis of "that". Rather, it has to do with the ill-defined nature of the term appositive. Here are some examples.
>
>1. My brother Bill ...
>2. Bill's statement that he was in Chicago at the time ...
>3. Bill, who lives in Chicago, ...
>4. Chicago, hog butcher to the world, ...
>5. Bill's party, scheduled for last night, ...
>6. The idea that Bill lives in Chicago ...
>etc.
>
>At best, appositive is a function, not a structure, and I'm not entirely sure that it's a function. I think rather that it's a traditional term used to describe a disparate variety of structures all of which occur after nouns. It has some usefulness if used with care. Calling 1,3,4,5 appositives doesn't bother me much, but including 2 and 6 does. I think they're different structures, complements to their head nouns rather than modifiers, and calling them appositives just confuses matters.
>
>But this is where poorly defined traditional grammar terms get us.
>
>Herb
>Herb,
> I know we have gone back and forth on this one before, and I'm still not convinced, but I think it may be important to clarify that there seems to be agreement that there is such a thing as a relative pronoun (who, with its various forms, and which, when functioning within these adjectival clauses), but that is a pronoun in some camps and a complementizer in others when it functions within a relative clause. We tend to agree that it is a complementizer in noun clauses precisely because it clearly has no role within the noun clause.
> I'm wondering whether you see any difference between a content clause structure and relative clause structure. (Are these the same structures, but differing in context by function?) The argument for these as appositional seems to hinge, at least for me, on the sense that that functions differently. Is the notion of appositional noun clause somewhat dependent on the misunderstanding of the role of that as pronoun, at least as you see it? Should we discard the category?
>
>Craig
>
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