Russell Shelley

Russell Shelley

Herb,

I also am interested in taking up again this question of connectives for adjective clauses.  It seems to me that there might be a functional justification of sorts.  In our discussion of the appositive we pointed out that the noun clause was able to identify the noun like belief, idea, fact, claim, decision, etc. in much the same way as an adjective (relative) clause often does.  When we say, "the man that came," the emphasis seems to be this same idea of identification.  We answer which man we're talking about.  When we say, "the man who came," the emphasis is not as much on identification per se as on identification through description.  In this case the man could well be already identified and the adjective clause may be interpreted as possibly non-restrictive even.  At least the author can be non-committal about it.  Perhaps these differences in meaning, if I am not imagining things, is evidence for your claim that the connective is substantially different as well. 

Bruce

>>> [log in to unmask] 3/10/2005 7:10:47 AM >>>

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



Stahlke, Herbert F.W. wrote:

Helene,

To expand on my cryptic response to Martha, "that" is the older of the two ways of starting a relative clause.  "Who" doesn't appear in relative clauses until the 15th century.  "That" appears six centuries earlier.  At the time, "that", or its ancestor, was not a pronoun.  It also is not a pronoun in modern English. It is simply a subordinating conjunction.  This addresses directly the question of whether or not "that" can refer to humans.  It's a conjunction.  Conjunctions don't refer to anything.  Using "that" in something like "The man that met me at the airport" is fine because "that" is a subordinating conjunction and doesn't replace the subject or stand for the subject or refer to "the man" because only pronouns refer and it's not a pronoun.

The rule that "that" can't refer to humans is a stylistic preference based on a faulty grammatical analysis.  I don't claim to be the first to argue that relative "that" isn't a pronoun.  Otto Jespersen, probably the greatest grammarian ever in the history of English, argued for it in great detail in the first half of the 20th century.

I haven't presented the evidence for the conjunction analysis, because I've done that before on this list, but I'll be glad to if you'd like to see it.

Herb Stahlke

Another Ball Stater

Everyone: I always read your discussions and appreciate the fact that you

know much more about grammar than I ever will. Here is a question for you

experts.

We all know that language is fluid and that what is heard is picked up and

practiced by many. Recently I seem to be hearing "He is the one that went"

or "Those that want ice cream must come to get it!" I was always under the

impression that whenever we speak of or refer to people, we should use

"who"--"He is the one who went"; "Those who want ice cream...". Has this

changed? Was it never true?

Thanks for your input. Helene A. Hoover (Cassopolis Public Schools, formerly

Ivy Tech and Ball State)

From: Martha Kolln <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar

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