relative "that" again
Wilson Gray
hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Fri Feb 20 22:10:48 UTC 2009
That it's unique is my point. You stop worrying about it and let
someone else show that the analysis won't stand. The fact that
something that *appears* to be similar was in vogue two hundred years
ago or the fact that there's a history of one kind of string written
as _'s_ in contemporary English that can be traced all the way back to
one proto-Indo-European Genitive, if you want, says nothing about your
example string. Do you know someone who actually speaks this way? I
don't, but it seems to me that it's something that someone might very
well say. I may even have used something similar, myself. But, is it a
nonce formation or is there a dialect that routinely uses such strings
as a matter of course? Another can't-no-cat-get-in-no-coop dialect?
Or am I missing the point and the problem is that your counter-example
is *possible* and not a string so totally *impossible* that no one
could come up with it, even if he sat down and studied over it?
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 4:14 PM, Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Poster: Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Re: relative "that" again
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Some speakers do use a resumptive pronoun for the possessive in
> relative clauses. I know there was a fashion (18th c.?) of writing a
> possessive pronoun instead of a possessive clitic, but I don't think
> that ever actually represented a grammatical shift. The 's clitic goes
> back to an OE case ending rather than a possessive pronoun. But I
> think the clitic and the resumptive pronoun work differently. We
> don't find other instances of possessive pronouns contracting in this
> way.
>
> Herb
>
> On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 3:39 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
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>> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject: Re: relative "that" again
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Why not analyze
>>
>> The guy that's sister married your cousin ...
>>
>> as
>>
>> The guy that his sister married your cousin ...
>>
>> -Wilson
>> –––
>> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
>> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>> -----
>> -Mark Twain
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 12:19 PM, Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>>> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster: Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
>>> Subject: relative "that" again
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> This topic is peripheral to the interests of this list, but I'm hoping
>>> it'll catch the interest of another grammarian or two.
>>>
>>> Several weeks ago we had a lengthy discussion on the ATEG list
>>> (Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar, a group within NCTE) on
>>> whether "that" in relative clauses like
>>>
>>> The guy that you met at the airport...
>>>
>>> is a pronoun or simply the same subordinating conjunstion as in a content clause
>>>
>>> I know that you met the guy at the airport.
>>>
>>> I argued, drawing on Jespersen, my own Language paper (1976), and a
>>> more thorough discussion in Huddleston&Pullum, that it's simply a
>>> subordinator, and I think the case is overwhelming, with almost no
>>> evidence to the contrary. However, there are two troublesome kinds of
>>> data for my claim.
>>>
>>> First there is the non-standard form "that's" as in
>>>
>>> The guy that's sister married your cousin...
>>>
>>> Several on the list argue that the fact that "that" takes a genitive
>>> clitic in non-standard usage makes it a pronoun at least in those
>>> varieties of English. This claim is weakened by the fact that
>>> demonstrative "that" never takes genitive -'s. I raised the
>>> possibility that relative "that" cliticizes to the head NP of the
>>> relative clause and that the -'s then cliticizes to that noun-headed
>>> construction, an analysis, that I admittedly have no evidence for.
>>>
>>> The second problem usage with relative "that" came to my attention in
>>> a peculiar way, and I'm borrowing from my posting to the ATEG list.
>>> Last Wednesday evening I was directing my church choir in a rehearsal
>>> of Millard Walker's setting of Psalm 121 (Brodt Music Company 1966).
>>> The text is the metrical version of the psalm from the Bay Psalm Book
>>> (1640). The Bay Psalm text is
>>>
>>> 1 I to the hills lift up mine eyes,
>>> from whence shall come mine aid.
>>> 2 Mine help doth from Jehovah come,
>>> which heav'n and earth hath made.
>>> 3 He will not let thy foot be moved,
>>> nor slumber; that thee keeps.
>>> 4 Lo he that keepth Israel,
>>> he slumbreth not, nor sleeps.
>>> 5 The Lord thy keeper is, the Lord
>>> on thy right hand the shade.
>>> 6 The sun by day, nor moon by night,
>>> shall thee by stroke invade.
>>> 7 The Lord will keep thee from all ill:
>>> thy soul he keeps alway,
>>> 8 Thy going out, and thy in come
>>> the Lord keeps now and aye.
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.cgmusic.com/workshop/baypsalm_frame.htm
>>>
>>> It has been observed that the Puritan translators and versifiers of
>>> the Psalter did not include poetry among their virtues, sacrificing
>>> grammar and sometimes sense on the altar of meter and rhyme. What
>>> struck me, though, was verse 3.
>>>
>>> 3 He will not let thy foot be moved,
>>> nor slumber; that thee keeps.
>>>
>>> I have and still do maintain firmly that there is no grammatical
>>> evidence to support the claim that "that" used at the beginning of a
>>> relative clause is a pronoun and not simply a subordinating
>>> conjunction. Combine a grammarian with a choir director, however, and
>>> the thought interrupts maintaining the beat that this instance of
>>> relative "that" feels very pronominal, and not just in the
>>> impressionistic sense that others have expressed. This is the only
>>> instance of relative "that" I have encountered where "that" must be
>>> stressed. We rarely stress "that" as a subordinating conjunction,
>>> whether in a relative or a content clause. Here, however, the meter,
>>> so slavishly followed by the writers, requires us to stress "that."
>>> It's an iambic line, and "that" bears the ictus of the second foot.
>>> This also appears to be a case of a headless relative clause, as in
>>> "Who laughs last laughs best," and headless relatives must begin with
>>> pronouns, usually wh-words. Of course, if "that" is a pronoun in this
>>> case, and it does look like one, it violates the prescriptive notion
>>> that "that" refers only to non-humans. But then "which" in v. 2
>>> refers to Jehovah, not a human, but still a person. Early Modern
>>> English did allow such a use of "which" Anyone familiar with older
>>> editions of the King James Version remember "Our Father which art in
>>> heaven" as the opening of the Lord's Prayer.
>>>
>>> So there are two strong, grammatical reasons for considering this
>>> instance of relative "that" to be a pronoun. It's stressed (the
>>> subordinator "that" never is), and it introduces a headless relative,
>>> which only pronouns can do. Now, is this a quirk of bad Puritan
>>> poetry? Even if so, the construction had to feel possible or even
>>> these violators of grammar and sense wouldn't have used it. This
>>> instance demonstrates that there is a case in a strange bit of bad
>>> mid-17th c. verse of relative "that" used in a way that can only be
>>> considered a pronoun. The evidence in Late Modern English remains
>>> overwhelming that we no longer do so, if English speakers ever
>>> actually did.
>>>
>>> I admit I don't know quite what to make of the Puritan pronominal
>>> relative "that."
>>>
>>> Herb
>>>
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>>>
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