I appreciate the wealth of information and must consider how to approach these nuances with high school students who really haven't had rigorous, lucid discussions about grammatical functions. Believe it or not, this will assist our approach to answering SAT problems, some of which I'll be posting soon for your collective perusal. College Board creates model sentences that pose typical errors – subject/verb agreement, misplaced modifiers, etc. – but on occasion the models are actually complex structures that many students can't find their way around to the correct answer. My approach to test prep isn't about the tricks of test taking, but rather the real understanding of why/how and the like when it comes to identifying sentence errors and sentence improvement questions. Like the SAT or not, it does give us good opportunities to talk about language.
Thanks again...
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stahlke, Herbert F.W." <
[log in to unmask]>
Date: Friday, December 17, 2010 1:50 pm
Subject: Re: Noun clauses
To:
[log in to unmask]> 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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