Quotative [to be] + "that"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Mar 22, 2005, at 11:23 AM, Tom Kysilko wrote:

> The following was posted to another listserve by a recent college
> grad, female, with a name that suggests that she may have origins in
> South Africa.  This may be a case of an omitted word between "are" and
> "that" - such as "agreed" - but maybe not.

 >>>[O]f the doctors who have access to Schiavo [sic] and her full
medical
history and are not affiliated with either side (ie court appointed),
they all
are that she is in a persistent vegetative state, severely brain
damaged (her
cerebral cortex is filled with spinal fluid), and has no hope of
recovery. <<<

some observations:

(1) the "all" here (between subject and VP) looks like just a floated
quantifier ("they all" = "all of them"), not like a quotative element.

(2) *quotative* "be" -- in examples like "And she was, 'You have to go
now' " (where what follows the form of "be" is a little performance of
the quoted material, perhaps in a dramatically emphatic intonation
and/or voice quality) -- is not at all uncommon.  but such examples
don't have a complementizer "that".

(3) so this looks like a kind of *reportive* (indirect-quotation) "be",
which seems to prefer "that" in most cases.  anyway, what's being
offered is not directly an account (however approximate) of some bit of
speech, but rather an account of some opinions (which, of course, we
know about via what people said, though we make no claim to be
supplying even an approximation of their actual productions).

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)