Quotative [to be] + "that"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Mar 26, 2005, at 3:15 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> FWIW, the fact that I'm an "is is" speaker was pointed out to me by
> Phil LeSourd of the Dept. of Anthro, at Indiana. This was in 1977, when
> he and I were roommates. At first, I refused to believe that this "'is
> is" was a feature of my idiolect, since I had never heard myself use
> such ungrammatical syntax. When I use ungrammatical English, it's on
> purpose and I'm fully aware of it. However, after a couple of hours of
> having Phil point out each occurrence of my use of "is is," I was
> forced to admit that "'is is" *is* a feature of my idiolect. Until I'd
> read of other instances of "is is" posted here, I thought that I was
> the only "is is" speaker on the face of the earth. I exaggerate, of
> course. In truth, I'd never given it a second thought till it began to
> be discussed here.
>
> Hey, you think maybe I'm, like, the originator of this anomaly? ;-)

not particularly likely.  though it's hard to trace it back before the
70s -- almost surely because people took it to be a disfluency (as most
people do today), so no one noticed it or recorded it.  lots of points
to phil lesourd for picking up on it.

meanwhile, as i said before, i keep finding new types of examples, of
sorts i was pretty sure didn't exist.  a few weeks ago...

there's the "That's X is Y" (Ross-Hagebaum 2004) construction, as in
   That's what makes the movie so powerful is that...
(until a few years ago, i didn't credit *these*, but they're real).
these now have, for some speakers, an extra "is":
   That's what makes the movie so powerful is is that...
wonderful, isn't it?

i have more.

arnold