Quotative [to be] + "that"

[Jonathan Lighter]

If numerous other examples are available, well and good.  The kind of slip I'm thinking of is of the computer kind.  One is momentarily distracted or hits the wrong button and "agree" comes out "are."  A spell check won't find it.

You'll forgive my skepticism.  I've certainly heard "I was like, 'this is crazy'" and even "I was all, 'this is crazy!"  But definitely not "I was, 'this is crazy!'" or "She's all that 'this is crazy!'"

JL

"Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Arnold M. Zwicky"
Subject: Re: Quotative [to be] + "that"
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On Mar 25, 2005, at 12:01 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote, re "they all are
that she...":

> How do we know the writer didn't mean to write "all agree that"? Or
> "all are agreed that"?
>
> This kind of slip happens all the time.

what, *exactly*, kind of slip do you have in mind? your first
suggestion would have intended "all agree [or: believe/say/maintain...]
that" surfacing as "all are that"; what's the mechanism? your second
proposal would have intended "all are agreed [or: of the
opinion/belief] that" surfacing as "all are that", presumably by
dropping the element heading the "that"-clause complement; again.
what's the mechanism?

more important, where do we find (inadvertent) speech errors that are
parallel to either of these scenarios? i can't say for sure that there
aren't parallels, but they certainly aren't of any well-known type in
the speech error literature.

you might want to say that "all are that" is a blend of "all agree
that" and "all are agreed that". but this is stunningly unlike normal
syntactic blends, in that on this analysis the product omits something
shared by both of the sources (a form of the verb "agree"), and that's
really rare. (syntactic blends arise from competition between plans
for two alternative ways of expressing "the same thing", and
consequently they tend very strongly to preserve material that's in
both plans.)

the larger point is that you can't just appeal to "slips" without
having some proposal about how the slips arise.

> Why assume it's a new linguistic feature?

well, i *think* i've seen parallel examples that didn't seem to be
slips -- though i don't have a file on them, and trying to google for
them is hopeless.

however, quotative "be" examples (without "that") are not at all
uncommon (isa buchstaller has a pile of these), and reportive "be"
(with "that") would be entirely parallel.
He was "You're an idiot".
He was that I was an idiot.

(it's actually hard to imagine the first of these being fairly common
without some people innovating the second.)

this doesn't settle the matter. some real work has to be done on "be
that" examples in real life. (please, *please*, someone look at this.
i have more little projects like this going than i could finish in
fifty years, much less the time i have left.)

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)


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