I think this has been one of the most enlightening discussions we've had
since I've joined the listserve. Thank you.
Dee
> [Original Message]
> From: STAHLKE, HERBERT F <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: 1/25/2009 9:00:16 AM
> Subject: Re: Pedants that or who?
>
> Craig,
>
> So I'll take the last word. Where we disagree is on whether "that" has a
thematic role, in any sense of the term, in relative clauses.
>
> Herb
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
> Sent: 2009-01-25 09:59
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Pedants that or who?
>
> > Herb,
> I promised you last word, but beg your forgiveness for a quick
> response. When you list the roles "that" can have in a clause (subject,
> direct object, object of preposition), you are highlighting what I mean
> by "clause internal" role. "That" in a noun clause doesn't have that,
> but simply tells us that the clause that follows has a subordinate
> role. Is that enough to classify them differently? I think that might
> be the major focus of our disagreement. As I have said a few times, the
> more we talk, the closer I come to agreeing with you.
> I think mainstream American linguistics has made itself only marginally
> useful by concentrating on grammar as a set of formal rules. For a
> writing teacher trying to convince my colleagues that grammar is not a
> neutral conveyor of meaning, only relevant when prescriptive rules are
> broken, this is hugely relevant. We need something closer to an ecology
> of language. I'm happy that you accept that as within the purview of
> science. I agree that we absolutely need the discipline of empirical
> observation to ground us. A theory has to explain and predict and has
> to be judged by how well it does that. If a formal theory can't explain
> the role of grammar in discourse, then we should build one or look for
> one that does.
> I hope we haven't tried the patience of our fellow participants on
> list. As always, I'm grateful when you take the time.
>
> Craig
>
>
>
> I see email remains consistent in handling tables.
> >
> > Herb
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> > [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
> > Sent: 2009-01-24 22:47
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: Pedants that or who?
> >
> > Craig,
> >
> > I agree we've pretty much exhausted the topic. We are working within
> > different ways of thinking about such topics, and that does cause a
little
> > talking past one another.
> >
> > The question of theme and relative clauses is interesting. Halliday has
> > it mostly right, except, of course, for including relative "that" as
> > thematic. The development of wh-relatives in the 14th and 15th cc.
> > represents the introduction of theme into relatives, since in earlier
> > stages of ME they didn't occur. It's curious that wh-relatives
developed
> > twice in the history of English, and for about the same reasons. In the
> > 10th c. church-trained scribes who also wrote Latin began introducing
> > questions words into relative clauses on the model of Latin, where
> > interrogative and relative pronouns are identical except for four out of
> > thirty different case/number/gender forms. The Latin forms all have
> > initial "qu-," which is cognate to English "wh-," but the Germanic
> > languages, like Greek and much of the rest of Indo-European maintained a
> > distinction between labiovelars like wh and qu for question words and
> > dental, like t, d, and th, for determiners. This use of wh-words for
> > relatives came to an abrupt end in the 11th c. after the Norman
Conquest,
> > when William closed the scriptoria and stamped out the official writing
of
> > English. Curiously, when English began to be written again in the later
> > Middle Ages, in the 13th c., writers, who were generally still educated
in
> > Latin, once again began introducing wh-pronouns into relative clauses.
> > None of this argues for your position or mine, but it's interesting that
> > thematicity spread into the relative clause construction in this way.
> > That-relatives represent the older, non-thematic structure of relatives.
> >
> > I've avoided using tables in email, because email spacing tends to be
> > unpredictable, but a table of English relative clauses is revealing.
I'm
> > not supplying the sample sentences, although I can send you a handout
that
> > has all of that, but here I'll just label the grammatical relationships
> > the NP in the relative clause can have.
> >
> > Wh- that 0
> > Subject + + -
> > Direct Object + + +
> > Object of a Preposition + + +
> > Object of Preposed Preposition + - -
> > Genitive + - -
> > Object of a Comparative Particle + - -
> >
> > What the table indicates is that "that" and 0 relatives are the same
> > thing, with the exception that we generally want to have either "that"
or
> > the subject expressed.
> >
> > There's a difference in science between what we can't exlain and what's
> > not explainable. What we can't explain is what directs our research.
> > What's not explainable generally ends up in literature and religion, two
> > fields I do not disdain. The fact, for example, that there can be no
> > proof for the existence of God does not prevent me from believing. It's
> > simply not subject to science. (Reading theology is a bit of a pastime
of
> > mine, especially now that I'm retired, and rigorous argument is possible
> > even where empirical testing is not.) On the other hand, the fact that
we
> > cannot now reconstruct languages back much beyond about 10,000 years
> > represents the current limits of our knowledge. I expect some clever
grad
> > student doing historical linguistics will blow through this limit
> > sometime.
> >
> > Earlier biologists didn't reject "prey" and "predator" as crucial
concepts
> > because they were dense or stubborn but because the empirical evidence
> > hadn't yet developed. It took the work of some of the great 19th and
> > early 20th c. ecologists to provide that evidence, and once it was
> > provided most biologists accepted the results with aplomb. Scientists
> > don't hesitate to change their theories when the evidence points in that
> > direction; to do otherwise is bad science. But ecologists persuaded
> > biologists on the basis of empirical evidence. Science dissolves into
> > mysticism and worse without a solid grip on empirical methodology.
> >
> > It's been a great discussion, and I admire the aplomb with which you
argue
> > an untenable position!
> >
> > Herb
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> > [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
> > Sent: 2009-01-24 17:07
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: Pedants that or who?
> >
> >> Herb,
> > I think we are probably getting to the point where differences are
> > clear enough to move on. I think the most central may be the clause
> > internal difference. Since, as Halliday points out, "wh" and "th"
> > elements tend to be thematic (therefore clause opening) and
> > complementizers tend to preceed what they subordinate, it's probably
> > not an argument either one of us can win.
> > "I believe that she is lonely." In this instance, "that" is clearly
> > outside the clause. "The picture, which/that is hanging on the wall,
> > was painted by your cousin." In these cases, either "which" or "that"
> > seems to me to be acting within the clause, either as subject of the
> > clause (a traditional view, certainly), or as clause internal stand-in
> > for the missing subject.
> > If these are interchangeable, as you seem to say, wouldn't that
> > undercut your argument?
> > I certainly don't want to rest my case on folk beliefs, and I don't
> > want to insist that structures that break the prescriptive rules are
> > not "grammatical" in a wider sense. I feel I have that evidence more on
> > my side, since "that" is interchangeable (if non-standard) with "who"
> > and "which" in instances where "who" and "which" would be thought of as
> > pronouns. It would seem to me that the burden of proof would be to
> > demonstrate that the pronounness is gone when the substitution takes
> > place. The simplest explanation would be to say that "that"
> > occasionally slips into a pronoun role.
> > But I'm certainly ready to accept your view as internally consistent,
> > thoughtful, credible, just about everything short of fully convincing.
> > The "that" in relatives certainly does help subordinate and seems
> > deletable in situations where it isn't needed to keep clear what is the
> > main clause verb. Those are key observations.
> > I worry about an approach to grammar that reduces what we know to
> > formal observations. Science can't always explain everything, but it is
> > also non-scientific to decide that what we can't explain isn't central
> > to what we are trying to explain. We can make things simpler by
> > reducing what we accept as relevant, but I'm not sure we aren't
> > distorting the issues when we do.
> > Consider the difference between a classical biology and an ecology.
> > Classical biology leans too heavily to the formal. That's not to say
> > that its observations are wrong. It just leaves so much out. Concepts
> > like "predator" and "prey" might once have been dismissed as folk
> > biology, but they are now very central to our science.
> > If you want to reply, I'll let you have the last word. Again, I thank
> > you for your patience and for indulging my interest in this.
> >
> > Craig
> >
> > Craig,
> >>
> >> You raise a good point, that categories are not discrete. This is
> >> something I've spent considerable time teaching my students. But let
me
> >> go through your list.
> >>
> >> Craig: I'm not sure the human/non-human contrast is telling, since
you
> >> could
> >> easily add "that" to the list. (Is "which" a variation or an
> >> independent form?)
> >>
> >> Herb: Begs the question. You're assuming that "that" is a pronoun and
> >> that it refers only to non-humans. (Remember McCain's "that one"?,
> >> granted it's the "one" that refers here.) The "who/that" contrast is a
> >> figment of prescriptive grammar. A lot of people believe it but only
> >> because they've been taught it prescriptively, just as they believe
> >> English sentences can't end in prepositions. Historically, certainly,
> >> "which" comes in as an independent form. Actually the first wh-word to
> >> appear as a relative pronoun is "what," which, ironically, we don't use
> >> that way any more.
> >>
> >> Craig: For which/that, you could add a grounding/not grounding
> >> contrast,
> >> explainable in tradiitonal grammar as restrictive/non-restrictive.
> >> "that" is definitely definite.
> >>
> >> Herb: "Which" can occur in both, and for a surprising number of
> >> speakers
> >> "that" also works in non-restrictives. I've caught myself using it
> >> myself. I think the restriction of "that" to restrictive is partly
real
> >> and partly very formal.
> >>
> >> Craig: Isn't "who" deletable? (Strictly speaking, I guess it's
> >> deletable
> >> in
> >> the "whom" case. But "that" doesn't have an "objective" form, so they
> >> seem very parallel to me in the way they follow deletion rules.)
> >>
> >> Herb: "Who" isn't really deletable. The problem is that in an
> >> asyndetic
> >> relative there is no marker, and so one could supply "who" or "that"
and
> >> so they look interchangeable. In fact, "that" deletes in relatives
> >> under
> >> much the same conditions it deletes in content clauses. If "who" were
> >> similarly deletable I'd expect it to do so in indirect questions like
> >> "Do
> >> you know who/*0 will meet us at the airport?" It clearly doesn't.
> >> "That"
> >> behaves like a subordinator; "who" behaves like a pronoun. No
parallel.
> >>
> >> Craig: I think most of us are used to a definition of pronoun as
> >> something
> >> that "stands in " for a noun or "takes the place of a noun". Since
> >> "that" seems to us to be doing that in relative clauses, perhaps
> >> fooling us into believing that, we want to place it in the pronoun
> >> category on largely functional grounds.
> >>
> >> Herb: I accept the informal, functional definition of "pronoun." The
> >> only argument I know of for considering relative "that" a pronoun is
the
> >> widespread sense that, as you note, it "seems to us to be doing that in
> >> relative clauses, perhaps fooling us into believing that, we want to
> >> place
> >> it in the pronoun category on largely functional grounds." But popular
> >> belief is a not a strong basis for linguistic description. We may seek
> >> by
> >> analysis to confirm or falsify popular belief, but it can at best be an
> >> object of study, not evidence. A similar popular judgment on language
> >> is
> >> the body of what's called folk etymology. Folk etymologies are very
> >> interesting objects of study for what they tell us of people's beliefs
> >> about their language and culture, but they tell us nothing useful about
> >> etymology. One of our obligations as grammarians is to determine to
the
> >> best of our ability what things are in language. There are similarly
> >> false beliefs that
> >>
> >> Sentences can't start with and/but/because.
> >> Sentences can't end with prepositions.
> >> Two negatives make a positive.
> >> Infinitives cannot be split.
> >> All nouns ending in non-genitive -s are plural (cf. measles,
> >> mumps, etc.)
> >> "That" in a relative clause can't be used to refer to a human.
> >> Etc.
> >>
> >> As grammarians we have to provide clarity in the discussion of such
> >> issues.
> >>
> >> Craig: I understand the impetus to narrow categories down to what we
> >> can
> >> scientifically observe. Both functional and cognitive approaches would
> >> go beyond that. As Langacher says in a number of places, it may be hard
> >> to define what a noun is on cognitive grounds (to give one example),
> >> but that doesn't mean it isn't enormously valuable, even essential to
> >> try.
> >>
> >> Herb: Two different things. If we are going to define categories,
it's
> >> going to be by discovering the properties that may characterize members
> >> of
> >> the category. We've known for a long time, before cognitive grammar
was
> >> named as an approach, that categories are fuzzy, not discrete. We can
> >> say
> >> to what degree a word belongs to a category, as in describing "may" as
a
> >> verb, without claiming that all members of the category have to share
> >> all
> >> of the same properties. We don't disagree on this. But it simply
isn't
> >> relevant to the question of what "that" is at the beginning of a
> >> relative
> >> clause.
> >>
> >> Craig: Even on structural grounds, relative "that" seems to act
> >> differently
> >> from subordinate "that" by taking a clause internal position.
> >>
> >> Herb: I don't know what you mean by this statement. Relative and
> >> subordinate "that" have the same role in their clauses. They are both
> >> complementizers. In what sense does "that" take a clause internal
> >> position
> >> in relatives? If you're going to argue that they can be subjects or
> >> objects, you'll be begging the question again, and you still won't have
> >> provided any evidence that "that" functions as a pronoun in such
> >> instances.
> >>
> >> So we return to the question of what it means that people commonly
think
> >> of "that" as a relative pronoun. Does it mean that they've been taught
> >> this is so? Without some overt teaching the issue wouldn't even arise.
> >> Ask the kid who waits on you at McDonalds, and see if you get much more
> >> than a blank look. Of course, you'll probably run into the one kid who
> >> happens to be a grammar freak and who will tell you it's a
subordinator,
> >> not a pronoun. We've all had students who believe that the subject of
a
> >> sentence is whatever comes first, a large part of our population
> >> believes
> >> that evolution never happened, and most college graduates believe that
> >> it's warmer in summer because the earth is closer to the sun. Popular
> >> belief is an object of study, not evidence.
> >>
> >> Herb
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> >> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
> >> Sent: 2009-01-24 12:30
> >> To: [log in to unmask]
> >> Subject: Re: Pedants that or who?
> >>
> >> Herb,
> >> This is hugely helpful.
> >> I'm not sure the human/non-human contrast is telling, since you
could
> >> easily add "that" to the list. (Is "which" a variation or an
> >> independent form?)
> >> For which/that, you could add a grounding/not grounding contrast,
> >> explainable in tradiitonal grammar as restrictive/non-restrictive.
> >> "that" is definitely definite.
> >> Isn't "who" deletable? (Strictly speaking, I guess it's deletable
in
> >> the "whom" case. But "that" doesn't have an "objective" form, so they
> >> seem very parallel to me in the way they follow deletion rules.)
> >> I think you are verifying my sense that there is not one single
> >> element
> >> that places something in the pronoun category, but a set of
> >> characteristics that sometimes overlap. In other words, if you used any
> >> single category to eliminate "that", you might have to eliminate
> >> something else as well. (I'm disagreeing with your sense that "that" is
> >> the only one deletable.)
> >> Once we get down to this level, though, classification becomes
mildly
> >> misleading.
> >> I think most of us are used to a definition of pronoun as something
> >> that "stands in " for a noun or "takes the place of a noun". Since
> >> "that" seems to us to be doing that in relative clauses, perhaps
> >> fooling us into believing that, we want to place it in the pronoun
> >> category on largely functional grounds.
> >> I understand the impetus to narrow categories down to what we can
> >> scientifically observe. Both functional and cognitive approaches would
> >> go beyond that. As Langacher says in a number of places, it may be hard
> >> to define what a noun is on cognitive grounds (to give one example),
> >> but that doesn't mean it isn't enormously valuable, even essential to
> >> try.
> >> Even on structural grounds, relative "that" seems to act differently
> >> from subordinate "that" by taking a clause internal position.
> >> But thanks much for this line of thought. My understanding deepens
as
> >> we go.
> >>
> >> Craig
> >>
> >>
> >> Craig,
> >>>
> >>> Good question. I would expect a pronoun to have some of the following
> >>> properties:
> >>>
> >>> Gender and/or number constrast
> >>> (Personal pronouns have both; demonstratives have number;
interrogative
> >>> and relative pronouns have a human/non-human contrast with
> >>> who/whose/whom
> >>> vs. what/which.)
> >>
> >>>
> >>> Case contrast
> >>> (Personal pronouns have three; interrogative and wh-relative also have
> >>> three unless you don't use "whom.")
> >>>
> >>> Definite/indefinite contrast
> >>> (Interrogative and wh-relative pronouns have -ever forms.)
> >>>
> >>> Not deletable
> >>> (NPs may be pronominalized or deleted. Deletion is not a possibility
> >>> for
> >>> pronouns; it's an alternative reduction of NPs resulting in zero
> >>> anaphora.
> >>> This is a different topic, pronominalization vs. deletion, on which
> >>> there
> >>> is a considerable literature. If you want to go into it, I'll post
> >>> something separate on it. Subordinator "that" is deletable.
> >>> Wh-pronouns
> >>> are not. Relative that behaves like the subordinator, not like a
> >>> pronoun.)
> >>>
> >>> One of the most telling ways in which "that" fails to behave as a
> >>> pronoun
> >>> in relative clauses is that the plural form it has as a pronoun
(those)
> >>> NEVER occurs, not even in non-standard dialects, speech errors, or
> >>> child
> >>> language. If it were a pronoun, I would expect such an error to occur
> >>> and
> >>> be noticed, but it doesn't ever get mentioned even in the most
> >>> arbitrary
> >>> of prescriptive grammars. It's not even perceived as a grammar
problem
> >>> because relative "that" simply isn't a pronoun and so wouldn't ever
> >>> invite
> >>> a plural agreement form.
> >>>
> >>> Herb
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> -----Original Message-----
> >>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> >>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
> >>> Sent: 2009-01-24 10:38
> >>> To: [log in to unmask]
> >>> Subject: Re: Pedants that or who?
> >>>
> >>> Herb,
> >>> Can you give us, in summary form, the morpho-syntactic criteria
that
> >>> would lead you to categorize something as a pronoun? I think the
> >>> problem may just come down to a difference in definitions.
> >>>
> >>> Craig >
> >>>
> >>> Bruce,
> >>>>
> >>>> Let me assure you that these sentences do occur, and not as false
> >>>> starts
> >>>> or interruptions.
> >>>>
> >>>> I share your concern that I may have been assuming the answer, but I
> >>>> keep
> >>>> getting driven back, by the data, to the fact that there is simply no
> >>>> evidence that this thing is or ever was pronominal. I hate burden of
> >>>> proof claims, but if there is evidence, morphosyntactic evidence,
> >>>> since
> >>>> that's the only kind we can observe, I'd like to see it.
> >>>>
> >>>> Herb
> >>>>
> >>>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> >>>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce Despain
> >>>> Sent: 2009-01-23 15:03
> >>>> To: [log in to unmask]
> >>>> Subject: Re: Pedants that or who?
> >>>>
> >>>> Herb,
> >>>>
> >>>> The third example, "There's this guy ... met me at the airport" is
> >>>> very
> >>>> strange to me. Sorry, I may have heard it, but interpreted (or
> >>>> re-interpreted) it to be a false start: "There's this guy. (He) met
> >>>> me
> >>>> at
> >>>> the airport, ..." I'm waiting to hear more of the story, expecting
the
> >>>> excited speaker to drop more resumptive pronouns in the process:
> >>>> "There's
> >>>> the guy, met me at the airport, got me in this scam." The occurrence
> >>>> seems marginal to me.
> >>>>
> >>>> You're right about the origin being more important that the (chance)
> >>>> identity of the replacement with a word already being used in the
> >>>> language
> >>>> as a demonstrative pronoun. I agree that the demonstrative meaning
> >>>> was
> >>>> lost, but the pronominal use is still there, is it not? Certainly
its
> >>>> lack of stress reinforces the view that it was not a demonstrative,
> >>>> but
> >>>> how can that make it lose a pronominal use? You seem to be saying
> >>>> that
> >>>> the OE conjunction changed its identity to "that" maybe by analogy,
> >>>> but
> >>>> cannot have acquired any of its meaning by the same process. Yet you
> >>>> even
> >>>> use the word "replace." Maybe if I'm begging the question, you would
> >>>> maybe be assuming the answer?
> >>>>
> >>>> Bruce
> >>>>
> >>>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> >>>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
> >>>> Sent: Friday, January 23, 2009 12:00 PM
> >>>> To: [log in to unmask]
> >>>> Subject: Re: Pedants that or who?
> >>>>
> >>>> Bruce,
> >>>>
> >>>> I cut my syntactic teeth on serial verbs, planning then to do my
> >>>> dissertation on them. It was enough of a problem to persuade me to
> >>>> shift
> >>>> to phonology.
> >>>>
> >>>> These "double zero" constructions, to coin a phrase, also occur in
> >>>> places
> >>>> where they can't possibly be interruptions, and I don't think the
> >>>> relative
> >>>> clause cases I've cited are either, but consider existentials:
> >>>>
> >>>> There's this guy that/0 I met 0 at the coffee shop.
> >>>> There's this guy that/0 I talked to 0 at the coffee shop.
> >>>> There's this guy that/0 0 met me at the airport.
> >>>>
> >>>> I've used 0s to specify slots for "that" and for the deleted NP. The
> >>>> last
> >>>> example, the subject instance, is not an interruption. It's simply a
> >>>> relative clause in an existential sentence, and you might hear
> >>>> something
> >>>> like this more frequently than the other example I gave.
> >>>>
> >>>> Your discussion of the question of "that" as a pronominal begs the
> >>>> question (in the logical sense, not the modern talking head sense).
> >>>> It
> >>>> makes the assumption that conjunctive "that" started life as
> >>>> determiner
> >>>> "that." There's no evidence that this was the case. Rather, this
use
> >>>> of
> >>>> "that" replace what in OE and EME was "þa," a particle that had an
> >>>> adverbial and grammatical function. It actually could introduce
> >>>> relative
> >>>> clauses, although those were more likely to be asyndetic in keeping
> >>>> with
> >>>> OE generally paratactic structure. You might argue that it was the
> >>>> demonstrative that replaced the indeclinable particle in subordinate
> >>>> clauses, but I think more important is what it took the place of, not
> >>>> what
> >>>> it started life as. By the time the replacement happened it was
> >>>> pretty
> >>>> much a reduced form, unlike the pronoun. If it shifted as a pronoun,
> >>>> I
> >>>> would expect its plural to shift with it, but we never find any form
> >>>> like
> >>>> "these" introducing relatives. It's in this purely grammatical role
> >>>> of
> >>>> subordinator that it combines with adverbs, pronouns, and
prepositions
> >>>> to
> >>>> form compound subordinators that have, in most cases, dropped the
> >>>> "that"
> >>>> altogether today.
> >>>>
> >>>> The loss of use of "whom" I think rather reflects that it was fairly
> >>>> late
> >>>> to make the shift from interrogative pronoun to relative and never
> >>>> really
> >>>> got established in the grammar in the first place. So its shaky
> >>>> status
> >>>> today is a reflection of its shaky history.
> >>>>
> >>>> Herb
> >>>>
> >>>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> >>>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce Despain
> >>>> Sent: 2009-01-23 10:50
> >>>> To: [log in to unmask]
> >>>> Subject: Re: Pedants that or who?
> >>>>
> >>>> Herb,
> >>>>
> >>>> Thanks for the clarification. I stand corrected on the serial verbs.
> >>>> The
> >>>> closest thing we have, I believe, is "I'll try and make it," where
> >>>> there
> >>>> is a definite tendency to "correct" it to "I'll try to make it." The
> >>>> multibranching structure is formal-theoretically distinct from the
> >>>> right-branching "correction." The semantics does not need to
branch.
> >>>> The point I was getting at had to do with the use of "to" as an
> >>>> infinitive
> >>>> marker being sublimated (lenition?) with modal auxiliaries, but being
> >>>> restored in periphrasis.
> >>>>
> >>>> Your sentences still seem contrived to me. I guess I'll have to
> >>>> listen
> >>>> more closely, instead of assuming, or overlooking what seems to me to
> >>>> be
> >>>> performance problems. The intonation is characteristic of the
> >>>> parenthetical insertions that Craig used to separate the RC from its
> >>>> antecedent. These items seem to be freely inserted between main
> >>>> constituents, but sometimes inserted even within a word, when
emphasis
> >>>> is
> >>>> required. Maybe it's the same thing, maybe not. When can sentences
> >>>> be
> >>>> interrupted by other sentences and become grammaticalized as
dependent
> >>>> structures? Do resumptive pronouns become grammaticalized? Maybe
> >>>> that's
> >>>> what's happening.
> >>>>
> >>>> There must be some other motivating factors involved with the
> >>>> construction
> >>>> of an argument to support the rejection of "that" as a relative
> >>>> pronoun.
> >>>> I cannot think that its lack of morphosyntactic marking could be a
> >>>> strong
> >>>> point. Doesn't the loss of the use of "whom" as a marked variant of
> >>>> "who"
> >>>> tells us that such marking is not really all that important. The
> >>>> conjunctive (and relative) "than" was originally the same word as
> >>>> "then"
> >>>> (not usually relative) but got differentiated in the course of time.
> >>>> The
> >>>> fact that "that" has not been differentiated (yet) cannot be terribly
> >>>> important to its present use.
> >>>>
> >>>> Bruce
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> >>>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
> >>>> Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2009 10:19 PM
> >>>> To: [log in to unmask]
> >>>> Subject: Re: Pedants that or who?
> >>>>
> >>>> Bruce,
> >>>>
> >>>> You raised doubts about the relevance of phonological phenomena to
> >>>> grammatical change, hence my second paragraph.
> >>>>
> >>>> As to serial verbs, in the languages that attest them, principally in
> >>>> West
> >>>> Africa, Southeast Asia, and New Guinea, serial verb constructions are
> >>>> considerably different from our auxiliary verb structures. A typical
> >>>> example from Yoruba is, without tones and some vowel contrasts since
I
> >>>> can't do them in email,
> >>>>
> >>>> Mo gbe eran lo si ile se jeun
> >>>> I picked-up meat went to house cooked ate
> >>>> I brought meat home, cooked, and ate it.
> >>>>
> >>>> Gbe, lo, si, se, and jeun are all verbs, all finite verbs, and there
> >>>> is
> >>>> no
> >>>> morphosyntactic marking of relationships among them beyond the
> >>>> iconicity
> >>>> of word order. Serial verb constructions don't involve subordination
> >>>> or
> >>>> coordination, and may include grammaticized forms like modals and
> >>>> aspectuals but typically those forms exhibit other constraints.
> >>>> Basically
> >>>> serial verb constructions use verbs to express the grammatical roles
> >>>> English uses word order and prepositions for and also allows
> >>>> expression
> >>>> of
> >>>> multiple events in a single sentence. I don't think English modals,
> >>>> periphrastic or simple, fit these patterns well. English auxiliaries
> >>>> also
> >>>> exhibit a right branching dependency structure that shows up
> >>>> especially
> >>>> placement of contrastive negation and in the logic of multiple
> >>>> negatives.
> >>>> Serial verbs do not exhibit a dependency structure.
> >>>>
> >>>> As to sentences subject relatives but no "that" and no subject, these
> >>>> are
> >>>> not contrived. They occur in spoken discourse. Usually there is
> >>>> intonational marking of the relative clause, but no syntactic
marking.
> >>>> In
> >>>> formal syntax, even wh-relatives are treated as having zero elements
> >>>> marked by traces in the canonical positions for those constituents.
> >>>> The
> >>>> wh-word moves to a COMP node and so is not in the clause itself. I'm
> >>>> not
> >>>> sure how the latest in formal syntax does that, but it's a variant of
> >>>> this.
> >>>>
> >>>> All of which gets us back to the question of whether "that" is
> >>>> pronominal
> >>>> in relative clauses. I'm not sure how it's simpler to call it a
> >>>> pronoun,
> >>>> except perhaps in a pedagogical sense. I can see the need to
simplify
> >>>> the
> >>>> description of certain areas of grammatical structure, including
> >>>> participle/gerund constructions, infinitival constructions, and
> >>>> relative
> >>>> clauses, and I don't object to such pedagogical measures. We've all
> >>>> needed them. I object rather to making category membership claims
> >>>> without morphosynactic evidence to support them, and this evidence is
> >>>> absent in the case of relative "that." I've looked for it, and it's
> >>>> not
> >>>> there.
> >>>>
> >>>> Herb
> >>>>
> >>>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> >>>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce Despain
> >>>> Sent: 2009-01-22 15:19
> >>>> To: [log in to unmask]
> >>>> Subject: Re: Pedants that or who?
> >>>>
> >>>> Herb,
> >>>>
> >>>> I agree completely with your first paragraph. The second seems a
> >>>> little
> >>>> off track but does lead to the third, of which I must remain to be
> >>>> convinced. It seems that the term "zero anaphora" is another way of
> >>>> saying that there is no "relative" when one seems to be needed when
> >>>> compared to other similar constructions. Serial verbs abound in
> >>>> English,
> >>>> yet they are traditionally called simple modal auxiliaries and
> >>>> periphrastic modals. Maybe it is not yet appropriate in the
> >>>> development
> >>>> of English to make a separate category for them. There is certainly
a
> >>>> zero DO in an adjective clause, but when the conjunction "that" is
> >>>> used,
> >>>> it's much simpler to call it a pronoun, especially when "that"
> >>>> regularly
> >>>> appears when not a DO and a relative is expected. It's possible
> >>>> origin
> >>>> as
> >>>> the marker of a content clause, which never was relative, hardly
seems
> >>>> relevant to its present use. It appeared with adverbs and pronouns
> >>>> that
> >>>> were relative, but had no relative meaning to transfer to them. The
> >>>> sentences you cite for Craig with the null sign marking the place of
a
> >>>> subject seem very contrived to me. If we can take performance errors
> >>>> as
> >>>> evidence for a living construction (or even a dead one), the sky is
> >>>> the
> >>>> only limit to the analysis.
> >>>>
> >>>> Bruce
> >>>>
> >>>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> >>>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
> >>>> Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2009 11:38 AM
> >>>> To: [log in to unmask]
> >>>> Subject: Re: Pedants that or who?
> >>>>
> >>>> Bruce,
> >>>>
> >>>> You made your point well. However, I think that in Late Middle and
> >>>> Early
> >>>> Modern English the function of "that" in these subordinator+that
> >>>> combinations, for want of a better term, was to provide a clear
marker
> >>>> of
> >>>> subordination. It hadn't been that long that question words had been
> >>>> used
> >>>> in relative clauses, or for that matter, that adverbial subordinate
> >>>> clauses developed to the level of richness they have today, and I
> >>>> suspect
> >>>> that the "that" was felt necessary because the inchoate subordinator
> >>>> wasn't yet felt to be fully a subordinator.
> >>>>
> >>>> There is a complex interaction between phonological change and
> >>>> grammatical
> >>>> change. Just look at how OE lost its noun case system, by weakening
> >>>> of
> >>>> final syllables. That final lenition traces its roots back to the
> >>>> Germanic Stress Shift that was part of Verner's Law. When Germanic
> >>>> accent
> >>>> shifted from movable, as in most of Indo-European, to fixed and
> >>>> initial,
> >>>> it triggered a whole chain of effects, one of the most of important
of
> >>>> which was final lenition. As English lost its noun case endings, its
> >>>> syntax changed from mixed SOV/SVO to almost completely SVO and with a
> >>>> much
> >>>> more fixed order of constituents than in OE. Also prepositions began
> >>>> to
> >>>> proliferate as ways to mark relationships that could no longer be
> >>>> marked
> >>>> by case endings. I suspect, although I have not looked carefully at
> >>>> corpus data on it, that the loss of "that" in the combinations we're
> >>>> talking about was very much the same sort of phenomenon.
> >>>>
> >>>> By the way, I think you're right the "whom that" is not, or at most,
> >>>> rarely attested. I would suspect that this is because of the
> >>>> relatively
> >>>> late entry of "whom" as a relative pronoun, after "that" had already
> >>>> begun
> >>>> to disappear.
> >>>>
> >>>> Obviously I would disagree with you that "that" can "hold the place
of
> >>>> the
> >>>> direct object." I would hold that in such relative clauses, the DO
is
> >>>> zero, another instance of zero anaphora. Lest anyone fear that I'm
> >>>> proliferating zero anaphora beyond reason, I would suggest looking at
> >>>> Chinese, Vietnamese, Yoruba, or other languages with serial verb
> >>>> constructions, where zero anaphora abounds.
> >>>>
> >>>> Herb
> >>>>
> >>>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> >>>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce Despain
> >>>> Sent: 2009-01-22 10:54
> >>>> To: [log in to unmask]
> >>>> Subject: Re: Pedants that or who?
> >>>>
> >>>> Herb,
> >>>>
> >>>> I hope you understood my point in composing the "at a time when that"
> >>>> structure. I was trying to say that such a monstrosity would not
have
> >>>> even occurred to the 16th c. mind. My proposal was that the phrase
> >>>> "when
> >>>> that" would not have been made a relative to "time" possibly because
> >>>> the
> >>>> "that" was already relative to the "when." The fact that "that"
> >>>> became
> >>>> a
> >>>> clitic in certain positions does not seem relevant to its occurrence
> >>>> as
> >>>> a
> >>>> relative. The fact that clitics tend to be phonologically dependent
> >>>> does
> >>>> not seem to be the same thing as a relative blending when in
> >>>> construction
> >>>> with the p/a/p. The "that" that disappears from an RC where it may
> >>>> hold
> >>>> the place of the object of a transitive verb, still does not seem to
> >>>> be
> >>>> the same as the "that" that introduces content clauses. The
> >>>> disappearance
> >>>> of the "that" of content clauses seems restricted to non-relative
> >>>> p/a/p.
> >>>> I could be wrong, but I suspect that the construction, *"the man whom
> >>>> that
> >>>> they elected" cannot be attested. I think such a construction would
> >>>> go
> >>>> a
> >>>> long way in making your argument sustainable (at least to me).
> >>>>
> >>>> Bruce
> >>>>
> >>>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> >>>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
> >>>> Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2009 3:31 AM
> >>>> To: [log in to unmask]
> >>>> Subject: Re: Pedants that or who?
> >>>>
> >>>> Bruce,
> >>>>
> >>>> I appreciate your caution on what we call a unit. I'm equally
> >>>> uncomfortable with calling some things compounds, although not so
much
> >>>> in
> >>>> the case of prepositions. Certainly "a piece of" functions as a
> >>>> partitive, in which "of" marks the partitive structure, while at the
> >>>> same
> >>>> time of+NP is the complement of "a piece." So cases of strings that
> >>>> behave as units are not uncommon, nor is it rare for syntactic
> >>>> structure
> >>>> and sense or phonological phrasing to conflict. To use the "piece"
> >>>> example again, phonologically we break "a piece of pie" into /@pis@
> >>>> pai/,
> >>>> that is, "of" cliticizes to "piece," not to "pie," which is its
sister
> >>>> constituent in the prepositional phrase.
> >>>>
> >>>> I agree that "at a time when that" would have sounded redundant,
> >>>> probably
> >>>> even odd, to a 16th c. ear. I suspect, especially on the frequency
of
> >>>> occurrence of "that" with a pronoun/adverb/preposition to introduce a
> >>>> subordinate clause means that "that" cliticized to that p/a/p. It
> >>>> then
> >>>> dropped from most combinations because clitic forms are unstressed
and
> >>>> therefore easily undergo lenition.
> >>>>
> >>>> Herb
> >>>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> >>>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce Despain
> >>>> Sent: 2009-01-21 10:34
> >>>> To: [log in to unmask]
> >>>> Subject: Re: Pedants that or who?
> >>>>
> >>>> Herb,
> >>>>
> >>>> I mentioned "so that," where the meaning of "so" is adverbial but the
> >>>> meaning of "that" is to introduce an adverbial noun clause. The use
> >>>> of
> >>>> "now that" would be of the same ilk. This adverb "so" and this
adverb
> >>>> "now" have complements that are relative, in that they refer back to
> >>>> their
> >>>> adverb antecedent. The "when that" seems on the surface to be a
> >>>> construction of the same sort. However, "when" is never an
> >>>> independent
> >>>> (non-relative and non-connective) adverb. I suspect that the
relative
> >>>> use
> >>>> of "that" with an adverb like "now" grew out of its use as a relative
> >>>> pronoun and was distinct from its rather independent use as object of
> >>>> a
> >>>> preposition "in" (cf. a few sentences back) or conjunction "when."
> >>>> The
> >>>> time clause introduced by "when" is adverbial together with the noun
> >>>> clause, which is not. I suspect that the sentence, "William attacked
> >>>> at
> >>>> a
> >>>> time when that the kingdom was at peace" would have sounded redundant
> >>>> (two
> >>>> relatives) even to the medieval ear. "William attacked when that
the
> >>>> kingdom was at peace" has none of the relative import of the former,
> >>>> and
> >>>> probably sounded much more natural.
> >>>>
> >>>> I think that the practice of analyzing multiple words as "units" can
> >>>> be
> >>>> misleading. We speak of compound prepositions and such, but the
> >>>> desire
> >>>> seems to be to divorce morphology from syntax. The clumping of units
> >>>> as
> >>>> wholes without syntactic significance can have the effect of sweeping
> >>>> important details under the rug. Some might be inclined to say that
> >>>> "kick
> >>>> the bucket" is not syntactically analyzable. But we can say "kicking
> >>>> the
> >>>> proverbial bucket" so that the "unit" has been taken apart. Its
> >>>> meaning
> >>>> as
> >>>> a whole has been modified by placing a modifier (relational
adjective)
> >>>> next to a part of it. I guess this connects to the clitic
discussion
> >>>> as
> >>>> well as the one on the pedagogy of science.
> >>>>
> >>>> Bruce
> >>>>
> >>>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> >>>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
> >>>> Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2009 5:26 PM
> >>>> To: [log in to unmask]
> >>>> Subject: Re: Pedants that or who?
> >>>>
> >>>> Bruce,
> >>>>
> >>>> That's an interesting parallel. But what about "now that Obama is
> >>>> president," which is clearly an adverbial use but not with a
> >>>> preposition.
> >>>> But I'm making the diachronic assumption that "now that" is a unit,
> >>>> just
> >>>> as "when" is, now that we no longer say "when that."
> >>>>
> >>>> As to "the man that was smoking," I think that does reflect the
> >>>> demonstrative character of articles in OE and ME, at least EME, and
> >>>> it's
> >>>> a
> >>>> modern reflex of that demonstrative function. As definite articles
> >>>> have
> >>>> undergone lenition and have reduced to a single form, the different
> >>>> functions have gotten mixed together.
> >>>>
> >>>> Herb
> >>>>
> >>>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> >>>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce Despain
> >>>> Sent: 2009-01-20 12:40
> >>>> To: [log in to unmask]
> >>>> Subject: Re: Pedants that or who?
> >>>>
> >>>> On the point that a relative "that" cannot be constructed with a
> >>>> preposition consider that your content-clause complementizer has the
> >>>> same
> >>>> characteristic. "He decided on it" - "He decided that they had
> >>>> arrived."
> >>>> The verb "decide" needs to have the prepositional particle for its
> >>>> complement, but the presence of the noun clause excludes the
> >>>> appearance
> >>>> of
> >>>> the particle. The RC, which is usually adjectival, doesn't normally
> >>>> need
> >>>> a preposition. However, the RC may be adverbial, in which case the
> >>>> preposition precedes it. Can't we say that the adjective clause
> >>>> introduced by "that" simply can't be used adverbially? The clauses
> >>>> introduced by "that" are noun or adjective.
> >>>>
> >>>> I've mentioned on the list before that the clause we call relative
has
> >>>> multiple functions and that there are adverbial clauses of degree and
> >>>> comparison that are relative without the relative pronouns, but with
> >>>> relative adverbs instead. The adverb "so" is often complemented with
> >>>> a
> >>>> "that" clause, so much so that "that" seems to be serving as a
> >>>> relative
> >>>> adverb. The adverb "more" (and the comparative -er) is complemented
> >>>> with
> >>>> a "than" clause, which "than" must be serving adverbially. These
> >>>> conjunctions seem to be just as much relative (adverbs) as are the
> >>>> relative (pronouns) of the RC. Also the two "as" in this last
> >>>> sentence
> >>>> are co-relative; the second has the other as an antecedent to which
it
> >>>> refers. The first one could be referring back to something in the
> >>>> context
> >>>> of the utterance until we hear the second one. This is very much
like
> >>>> the
> >>>> "the" in "the man who is smoking." "The" could be referring back in
> >>>> context until the relative clause comes along. This kind of behavior
> >>>> on
> >>>> the part of "the" is what gives us the relative meaning in "the man
> >>>> that
> >>>> is smoking." It looks to me for all the world like a relative
> >>>> demonstrative pronoun.
> >>>>
> >>>> Bruce
> >>>>
> >>>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> >>>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
> >>>> Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2009 9:23 AM
> >>>> To: [log in to unmask]
> >>>> Subject: Re: Pedants that or who?
> >>>>
> >>>> Herb,
> >>>> I'm a little uncomfortable with the notion that we have to base
our
> >>>> "science" totally on formal observations and that observations about
> >>>> what something seems to mean are "naive." That may be the writing
> >>>> teacher speaking. It may also be from a growing interest in cognitive
> >>>> lenses. But I'm not ready for a full defense yet.
> >>>> I guess what I'm holding out for, not so much from you but from my
> >>>> fellow public grammarians, is a much clearer differentiation between
> >>>> "that" in a content clause and "that" in a relative clause. You and I
> >>>> seem close on that, but then you draw back from saying there's a
> >>>> possibility of a third "that" and I'm still ruminating.
> >>>> I don't mean to replace your thoughtful phrasing for all this, but
> >>>> here's what I would tell my grammar class students. In a relative
> >>>> clause, the nominal group being "modified" has a role within the
> >>>> modifying clause. The marker (relative pronoun?) helps us establish
> >>>> that role. This doesn't happen in a content clause, where the
> >>>> subordinator (I call it a complementizer) simply stands outside the
> >>>> clause. This complementizing even happens in some clauses that seem
> >>>> relative by position, but turn out to be structurally different.
> >>>> "He believes that the aliens have landed." "His belief that the
> >>>> aliens
> >>>> have landed is absurd." In neither of these is "belief" or a pronoun
> >>>> stand-in functioning within the subordinate clause. to me, these are
> >>>> complements rather than modifiers.
> >>>> "The aliens that have landed are green." In this case, aliens have
> >>>> done
> >>>> the landing and it's these specific aliens that are green. This is
> >>>> what
> >>>> feels pronominal to many of us, but could be explained thoughtfully
as
> >>>> a subordinating stand-in for an absent subject.
> >>>> I think we are both in full agreement to this point. I'm still
> >>>> leaning
> >>>> toward calling the clause itself a "relative clause" even if it turns
> >>>> out "that" isn't acting pronominally in the full sense of the word.
> >>>> For
> >>>> pedagogical reasons, certainly, that makes the most sense. For
> >>>> pedagogical reasons, it might also be less confusing to say that the
> >>>> "relative pronouns" that help us out in these clauses all act a bit
> >>>> differently. (I would include "where" and "when". "The place where I
> >>>> was born." "The time when I'm most alert.")
> >>>> Certainly the fact that we can say "the dresser in which I keep my
> >>>> socks" but not "the dresser in that I keep my socks" gives me deep
> >>>> pause.
> >>>> I have to admit that the more we discuss this, the clearer your
> >>>> position becomes. Could it be that "that", because it is both
> >>>> subordinator and pronoun in other instances, can be acting in ways
> >>>> here
> >>>> that are very unique?
> >>>> If it feels like a subject, can it become one over time?
> >>>> Ultimately, it is more useful to agree on how something acts than
it
> >>>> is
> >>>> to agree on classification, since classification categories can
change
> >>>> with a change in definition. I think I'm arguing for a more fluid
> >>>> definition for pronoun, in part because it still feels to me that the
> >>>> "that" that shows up in these clauses is different from the other
two,
> >>>> the subordinator and the demonstrative.
> >>>> Again, though, I thank you for leading us patiently toward the
> >>>> light.
> >>>> That I agree with you more and more as time goes on should tell me
> >>>> something.
> >>>>
> >>>> Craig
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> STAHLKE, HERBERT F wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Craig,
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> My point was that while we do still use "that" after "except," "now,"
> >>>> and
> >>>> a few other adverbs it used to have a much broader distribution. It
> >>>> was
> >>>> used regularly with another word (since, if, when, while, which,
etc.)
> >>>> to
> >>>> form show subordination, and the use of "that" in such cases was
quite
> >>>> consistent. In LME, on the other hand, that use in combination with
a
> >>>> content word to mark subordination has become restricted to just a
few
> >>>> holdouts. As to your other "now that" sequence, your example has
> >>>> "that"
> >>>> as a demonstrative, and it is clearly pronominal. I don't know of
any
> >>>> grammar that identifies relative that with demonstrative that. (I
> >>>> also
> >>>> don't find the comma necessary, but that's another matter.) You're
> >>>> right,
> >>>> of course, that the "that" in these modern cases does mark a
> >>>> subordinate,
> >>>> non-relative clause, and, consequently, the clause will contain no
> >>>> nominal
> >>>> gaps, since those occur only in relatives (to avoid undue
redundancy).
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> As to your feeling that the arguments for "that" as a subordinator
> >>>> don't
> >>>> consider the possibility of a third "that," it's worse than that.
> >>>> Those
> >>>> arguments explicitly reject that possibility. On morphosyntactic
> >>>> grounds,
> >>>> there is no evidence that relative "that" is in any way pronominal.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Your argument that "the music that moves her" and "the people who
move
> >>>> her" are parallel is based solely on intuition, not on evidence.
> >>>> Intuition is, of course, a double-edged term in grammar. Within a
> >>>> large
> >>>> body of linguistic literature the term is carefully and narrowly
> >>>> defined
> >>>> to mean native speaker judgments of well-formedness of an utterance.
> >>>> You
> >>>> may or may not accept that definition, but it is at least reasonable
> >>>> rigorous. In your usage below, "intuition" is more like "gut
> >>>> feeling,"
> >>>> something on the basis of which I might choose whom to hire out of
> >>>> several
> >>>> otherwise equally qualified applicants, but we can't base science on
> >>>> gut
> >>>> feeling. We can create hypotheses in part that way, but we can't
test
> >>>> them that way. That sort of intuition is not evidence.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> I agree, however, that the two are parallel, and they are because
> >>>> reference can be represented by a pronoun or by zero anaphora, and in
> >>>> that-relatives we have the latter. The gap occurs in just the place
> >>>> where
> >>>> the co-referential NP would be if it were a main clause. If I
> >>>> remember
> >>>> right, Halliday and Hassan dealt at some length with deletion as a
> >>>> cohesive device. In both sentences, the head noun represents what's
> >>>> doing
> >>>> the moving. We interpret the subject of "move" either from the
> >>>> pronoun
> >>>> "who," which co-indexes with "the people," or from the zero subject
> >>>> after
> >>>> "that." As I argued earlier, that subject is zero precisely because
a
> >>>> lot
> >>>> of speakers can say, "The man 0 met me at the airport dropped me off
> >>>> at
> >>>> my
> >>>> office." It is partly intonation that helps us parse the utterance.
> >>>> People differ as to whether they would use this construction, but it
> >>>> represents a simple asyndetic relative clause where the zero subject
> >>>> co-indexes with the head noun.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> To demonstrate that relative "that" is in some way nominal, you'll
> >>>> need
> >>>> to
> >>>> show that it has clearly nominal behavior, and that's a
> >>>> morphosyntactic
> >>>> question, not one that can be answered from intuition.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On the other hand, Edith raises the interesting question of whether
> >>>> "that"
> >>>> could be changing its function from subordinator to pronoun. I
> >>>> certainly
> >>>> don't reject that possibility. Such grammatical change is not
> >>>> unusual,
> >>>> and more radical cases abound. My problem with the claim, though, is
> >>>> again an absence of evidence beyond, present company excepted, naïve
> >>>> assumptions about grammar. A long time ago, 1973, I think, I
> >>>> published
> >>>> a
> >>>> paper that included an internal reconstruction of the Yoruba
preverbal
> >>>> morphemes, including the subject pronouns. This is a fairly complex
> >>>> problem, and internal reconstruction is a historical linguistic
> >>>> methodology for extrapolating earlier stages of a language from
> >>>> synchronic
> >>>> alternations and irregularities. On historical grounds, what every
> >>>> grammar and every Yoruba teacher I had called a third person singular
> >>>> pronoun was nothing of the sort. Historically I could explain every
> >>>> phonological and morphological property of the form, and none of
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> it had any historical source in the pronoun systems. Rather, the
> >>>> third
> >>>> singular in the present affirmative indicative was a zero form, just
> >>>> as
> >>>> it
> >>>> was in all the other subject pronoun sets in the language, and there
> >>>> were
> >>>> different paradigms depending on tense, modality, and negation. In
> >>>> spite
> >>>> of a total lack of morphosyntactic evidence that the form was a third
> >>>> singular subject pronoun and in the face of overwhelming evidence to
> >>>> the
> >>>> contrary, grammar writers, Yoruba language teachers, and speakers of
> >>>> the
> >>>> language who also spoke English insisted that the word did in fact
> >>>> translate as English he/she/it (the language is totally without
gender
> >>>> marking). On the basis of that, I can accept that for modern
speakers
> >>>> that form has changed from what it was historically, a combination of
> >>>> two
> >>>> different morphemes neither of them pronominal, to a subject pronoun.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Edith suggests that something similar has happened in English with
> >>>> relative that, but in the English case the grammars are far from in
> >>>> agreement, and the best of them, Jespersen and Huddleston&Pullum,
> >>>> reject
> >>>> the idea. Grammar teachers are rather more in agreement, but I
> >>>> suspect
> >>>> that's because of what they've been taught, which tends not to come
> >>>> from
> >>>> the best sources. So the change may be in progress, but there's no
> >>>> way
> >>>> of
> >>>> detecting it yet.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Herb
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Herb,
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> In structures like "except that" and "now that", "that" is
clearly
> >>>>
> >>>> part of a subordinating (or complementing) process. Both require an
> >>>>
> >>>> explicit subject for the clause that follows. "Now that Obama has
been
> >>>>
> >>>> elected..." If we said "Now that is a good thing," "that" is clearly
> >>>>
> >>>> acting like a pronoun. I would also expect a comma after "now." "Now,
> >>>>
> >>>> that is a good thing."
> >>>>
> >>>> I can't help feeling that the arguments for "that" as a
> >>>> subordinator
> >>>>
> >>>> rather than a pronoun don't consider the possibility of different
> >>>>
> >>>> "that's." I'm positing three: the subordinator, the demonstrative,
and
> >>>>
> >>>> the relative.)
> >>>>
> >>>> To me, "The music that moves her" is very parallel to "The people
> >>>> who
> >>>>
> >>>> move her." Neither that or who can be deleted from these because (as
> >>>> I
> >>>>
> >>>> see it) the clause needs an explicit subject. Either can be deleted
if
> >>>>
> >>>> another subject is present. ("The music she loves... The people she
> >>>>
> >>>> loves.") You keep saying there isn't any evidence for "that" as a
> >>>>
> >>>> relative, but the evidence seems strong to me. The feeling sense that
> >>>>
> >>>> the music is doing the moving and "that" stands in as the clause
> >>>>
> >>>> subject seems very compelling. None of the arguments against it seem
> >>>> to
> >>>>
> >>>> outwiegh that compelling intuition.
> >>>>
> >>>> Is it just a matter of classifying "that" differently because it
> >>>>
> >>>> doesn't have as much flexibility as "which" ("with which") or have
> >>>>
> >>>> separate forms (like "whose" and "whom")? Can we have a relative
> >>>>
> >>>> pronoun with more constraints than other pronouns?
> >>>>
> >>>> We call these clauses "relative" in part because they are
> >>>> adjectival
> >>>>
> >>>> and the pronoun stands in for what the whole clause modifies. Is
there
> >>>>
> >>>> an example for "that" in which that doesn't at least seem to happen?
> >>>> Is
> >>>>
> >>>> seeming (cognition) unimportant? Wouldn't it make just as much sense
> >>>> to
> >>>>
> >>>> call it a relative pronoun at least in these instances when it seems
> >>>> to
> >>>>
> >>>> act like one?
> >>>>
> >>>> As far as I can tell, I recognize the same observations about how
> >>>> it
> >>>>
> >>>> acts as you do, but am just comfortable placing it in a relative
> >>>>
> >>>> category because it seems similar enough to other relatives to
warrant
> >>>>
> >>>> that.
> >>>>
> >>>> Clearly, in other cases, "that" acts like a subordinator or
> >>>> different
> >>>>
> >>>> kind of (non-relative) pronoun.
> >>>>
> >>>> Am I totally missing the point?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Craig
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> This thread has teased out some of the complexity surrounding "that."
> >>>> No
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> one has mentioned the demonstrative, which is the direct descendant
of
> >>>> the
> >>>>
> >>>> OE form "thaette" that Edith notes, and I think we're all agreed that
> >>>> the
> >>>>
> >>>> demonstrative and the conjunction are distinct forms.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> The one formal argument for pronoun status of relative-that is the
> >>>> fact
> >>>>
> >>>> that children and some non-standard dialects do have the form written
> >>>> as
> >>>>
> >>>> "that's." appending the genitive marker to the form in question.
This
> >>>> is
> >>>>
> >>>> not, however, a particularly strong argument because, as Arnold
Zwicky
> >>>> has
> >>>>
> >>>> demonstrated elsewhere, the -'s genitive is not an affix but a
clitic.
> >>>>
> >>>> Clitics are forms that typically attach to phrases, not to word
stems.
> >>>>
> >>>> Affixes attach to word stems. The fact that we can say "the Queen of
> >>>>
> >>>> England's decision" demonstrates that -'s attaches, here, to a
nominal
> >>>>
> >>>> construction, not to a noun stem. The fact, then, that for some
> >>>> speakers
> >>>>
> >>>> it can attach to the subordinator "that" simply means that for them
> >>>> it's
> >>>>
> >>>> behaving like a clitic, not like an affix.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Bill's concern over zero forms is well-founded. We don't want to
> >>>>
> >>>> proliferate zero forms every time we run into an anomalous
> >>>> distribution,
> >>>>
> >>>> which we certainly have in that and wh- relative clauses. However, I
> >>>>
> >>>> would dispute, or at least strongly question, the claim that the
> >>>> absence
> >>>>
> >>>> of "that" in an RC represents a deletion. That certainly doesn't
> >>>> reflect
> >>>>
> >>>> the historical facts, although the contemporary behavior of something
> >>>>
> >>>> doesn't necessarily have to reflect closely its historical
> >>>> development.
> >>>>
> >>>> I'd argue rather that asyndetic (unconnected) and that-marked
> >>>> relatives
> >>>>
> >>>> are simply two options--no zero involved here.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> As to the feeling that rel-that is pronominal, I suspect this is
> >>>>
> >>>> influenced in part by the syncretism with the demonstrative, which is
> >>>>
> >>>> quite a different form. It is, for one thing, nearly always
stressed,
> >>>> and
> >>>>
> >>>> the subordinator is almost never stressed. As far as Craig's example
> >>>> of
> >>>> a
> >>>>
> >>>> "that it" relative construction, where the "it" is a resumptive
> >>>> pronoun,
> >>>>
> >>>> resumptives in subject position are particularly problematical. They
> >>>> tend
> >>>>
> >>>> to occur, when they do, only in those places where "that" can't
occur.
> >>>> In
> >>>>
> >>>> subject position we're more likely to delete where the subject of the
> >>>>
> >>>> relative is coreferential with the head noun. And that makes it very
> >>>> much
> >>>>
> >>>> like other subject deletions in dependent structures in English.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> In response to Dick's query about complementarity, wh- and that
> >>>>
> >>>> historically were not complementary. In fact, in late Middle English
> >>>> and
> >>>>
> >>>> Early Modern English the two typically occurred together. In fact,
> >>>> "that"
> >>>>
> >>>> occurred regularly after what we now consider adverbial subordinating
> >>>>
> >>>> conjunctions, so that expressions like "which that," "who that,"when
> >>>>
> >>>> that," and "if that (see the Sydney sonnet I posted not too long
> >>>> back),"
> >>>>
> >>>> etc. were the rule. We still have reflexes of this in "now that" and
> >>>>
> >>>> "except that." Over time, as we get into Late Modern English, the
> >>>> sense
> >>>>
> >>>> that the "that" is needed to mark subordination diminishes and the
> >>>> pronoun
> >>>>
> >>>> or adverb takes on that function itself.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> I understand the feeling that relative that is pronominal; I just
> >>>> haven't
> >>>>
> >>>> seen any evidence for it.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Herb
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
> >>>>
> >>>> Emeritus Professor of English
> >>>>
> >>>> Ball State University
> >>>>
> >>>> Muncie, IN 47306
> >>>>
> >>>> [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> >>>>
> >>>> ________________________________________
> >>>>
> >>>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> >>>>
> >>>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
> >>>> interface
> >>>> at:
> >>>>
> >>>> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> >>>>
> >>>> and select "Join or leave the list"
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended
> >>>> recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information.
> >>>> Any
> >>>> unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited.
If
> >>>> you
> >>>> are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply
> >>>> email
> >>>> and destroy all copies of the original message.
> >>>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
> >>>> interface
> >>>> at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or
> >>>> leave the list"
> >>>>
> >>>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> >>>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
> >>>> interface
> >>>> at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or
> >>>> leave the list"
> >>>>
> >>>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> >>>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
> >>>> interface
> >>>> at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or
> >>>> leave the list"
> >>>>
> >>>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> >>>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
> >>>> interface
> >>>> at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or
> >>>> leave the list"
> >>>>
> >>>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> >>>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
> >>>> interface
> >>>> at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or
> >>>> leave the list"
> >>>>
> >>>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> >>>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
> >>>> interface
> >>>> at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or
> >>>> leave the list"
> >>>>
> >>>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> >>>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
> >>>> interface
> >>>> at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or
> >>>> leave the list"
> >>>>
> >>>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> >>>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
> >>>> interface
> >>>> at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or
> >>>> leave the list"
> >>>>
> >>>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> >>>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
> >>>> interface
> >>>> at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or
> >>>> leave the list"
> >>>>
> >>>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> >>>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
> >>>> interface
> >>>> at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or
> >>>> leave the list"
> >>>>
> >>>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> >>>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
> >>>> interface
> >>>> at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or
> >>>> leave the list"
> >>>>
> >>>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> >>>>
> >>>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
> >>>> interface
> >>>> at:
> >>>> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> >>>> and select "Join or leave the list"
> >>>>
> >>>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
> >>> interface
> >>> at:
> >>> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> >>> and select "Join or leave the list"
> >>>
> >>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> >>>
> >>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
> >>> interface
> >>> at:
> >>> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> >>> and select "Join or leave the list"
> >>>
> >>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> >>>
> >>
> >> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
> >> interface
> >> at:
> >> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> >> and select "Join or leave the list"
> >>
> >> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> >>
> >> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
> >> interface
> >> at:
> >> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> >> and select "Join or leave the list"
> >>
> >> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> >>
> >
> > To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
interface
> > at:
> > http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> > and select "Join or leave the list"
> >
> > Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> >
> > To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
interface
> > at:
> > http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> > and select "Join or leave the list"
> >
> > Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> >
> > To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
interface
> > at:
> > http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> > and select "Join or leave the list"
> >
> > Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> >
>
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
interface at:
> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> and select "Join or leave the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
interface at:
> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> and select "Join or leave the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
|
