Dick,

I appreciate the clarity of your arguments and of your presentation of data.  I don’t know how to evaluate claims that are based on impression, however well-informed the impression is. 

There is no question that interesting things are happening in the grammar of “that.”  I suspect that the strong impression that Craig and others on the list have that relative “that” is distinct from subordinator “that” and is pronominal is at least congruent with the changes that are taking place, the occurrence of genitive “thats” and of “thatever.” 

This raises questions of how historical change works in language, especially analogical change, which is consistent in its irregularity.  We get the innovative past tense “dove” from “dive” by analogy to “drive/drove,” but we don’t get “diven” by analogy to “driven.”  These two changes in the grammar of “that” don’t indicate that relative “that” is becoming a pronoun but simply that in two morphologically distinct uses it has taken on pronominal function.   Without morphosyntactic evidence I’m not comfortable calling relative “that” a pronoun.  It’s part of one of two relative clause structures in English.  “That” relatives are an innovation in late Old English, but they develop from the OE paratactic relative, where the status of the clause as relative could frequently only be established pragmatically.  Wh-relatives, as I noted earlier, are a separate system borrowed from Latin.  The traditional school grammar treatment of relative “that” as a pronoun is simply a bad analysis based on the orthographic identity of subordinator “that” and demonstrative “that,” one that has a long history but no validity, as Jespersen showed three quarters of a century ago.

These two relative clause systems persist in Modern Standard English, and the wh-relative remains a result of overt learning, hence the continuing confusion over matters like the gender of relative “that.”  And, interestingly, wh-relatives are not a systematic feature for a lot of non-standard speakers of English.   They are a feature of educated English, passed on through education.

I know as a linguist I’m supposed to examine contemporary data to determine how the language works now, but I’m also a historical linguist, and my colleagues have occasionally chided me for using historical evidence to understand how the language is today. 

Herb

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dick Veit
Sent: Monday, December 20, 2010 8:26 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Noun clauses

Herb,

Here's some additional data about "that" in relative clauses to supplement what you presented in an earlier post. In the examples, Ø represents no spoken word (e.g., "the book Ø we read" = the book we read), and * represents an ungrammatical term (e.g., "the author *to that we wrote").

Restrictive relative clause

Nonrestrictive relative clause

Some observations:

1. In restrictive clauses, "that" occurs in the same positions as "who," "whom," and "which" for subject, direct object, and object of a clause-final preposition.
2. "That" occurs in the same positions as Ø except for subject of a restrictive clause.
3. Unlike "who" or "which," "that" cannot directly follow a preposition.
4. Unlike "who" but like "which," "that" does not have a possessive form ("whose" but not "which's" or "that's"). This fact might not be significant, since "whose" seems to be the universal possessive relative pronoun, representing both animate and inanimate noun phrases (unlike "who/m," which represents only animate phrases).
5. Unlike "who," "whom," and "which," "that" does not occur in nonrestrictive clauses.

The data is decidedly mixed, and you are wise to state, "I'm not willing to say that pronominal status [of "that"] has not developed beyond the non-standard genitive use [that's]." You and others presented several arguments, historical and otherwise, for the anti-pronoun position. The chief argument for the pro-pronoun position is intuitive. For at least some people, "the author who wrote the book" and "the author that wrote the book" seem indistinguishable, with the "who" and "that" seeming to represent "the author" in the relative clause. On the other hand, if "that" is a relative pronoun, why can't we say "the author to that we wrote"? For me the jury is still out, and I hope to read further contributions.

Dick

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