Zero-option

[Arnold Zwicky]

bob fitzke:
 >Many years ago I had a family doctor who started most of his
 >sentences, "It's that....". I subsequently learned he had a
 >pronounced stutter and was somehow better able to control it by
 >starting sentences this way. Perhaps the gentleman who starts his
 >sentences with "Is..." may have some reason for doing so other than
 >it being simply idiosyncratic.

well, yes, but the family doctor chose something that was already
available in the language, "It's that" + S, an alternative to things
like "The thing is that" + S (most commonly used, i think, to express
some connection, often of contrast, to previous discourse).

even if ron butters's acquaintance uses sentence-introducing "is
(that)" for some personal reason, he's still chosen something in
the language (his language, at any rate) for this purpose.  it's
not as if people just seize on random stuff, like "foondig" or
"at's them".

there is, however, the possibility that sentence-introducing "is
(that)" arose from "it's that", though there are several points that
speak against this proposal: the phonetic route from [Its] to [Iz] is
problematic; "it's that" has obligatory auxiliary reduction ("It is
that we have to go" is just not possible, except as a
hypercorrection), so that there is literally no "is" in "it's that" to
serve as the source of the "is" in "is (that)"; and the "that" of
"it's that" is also obligatory ("It's we have to go" is not possible
for me, and i haven't collected any examples of "it's" used this way),
while the "that" of "is (that)" is optional, so that there's no "it's"
source for things like "Is we have to go" (which are attested).

i should have mentioned one salient fact about the people who use
sentence-introducing "is (that)": the ones that my students have
listened to at some length are all heavy double-"is" users.  this is
what you'd expect if double "is" was the source of
sentence-introducing "is (that)"; innovative, reanalyzed,
constructions always co-exist for a while (sometimes a very long
while, as close to forever as you get in language history) with the
older constructions that served as their sources.

of course, it's possible that "is (that)" speakers also are heavy
"it's that" users; we haven't been listening for "it's that".  even if
"it's that" is not the actual source for "is (that)", it could have
been a facilitating factor; nothing says that a linguistic change has
to have exactly one cause.

in any case, here's the situation as i know it: there are a large
number of double-"is" users, most of them giving no indication that
they also have sentence-introducing "is (that)" (two people that i
have listened to at great length who are of this sort are the
philosopher barbara scholz and the KFJC radio announcer robert
emmett); but there are a few double-"is" users who also have
sentence-introducing "is (that)".

*however*, there's a selection bias here.  the people we've been
listening to were originally selected *because* they were double-"is"
users.  we haven't been listening independently for
sentence-introducing "is (that)".  it's possible that the one-way
implication suggested above (sentence-introducing "is (that)" implies
double "is", but not vice versa) is just a product of the way we
selected our informants. so now it's time to start listening for
sentence-introducing "is (that)" on its own.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)