zero vs. "that" relatives

[Wilson Gray]

FWIW, I prefer the form with "that." I have the *impression" that
"that" is used more often in BE than in sE. I'm willing to admit that
I could be wrong about that. Maybe it's just that *I* prefer the
"that" forms. But my preference for "that," IMO, is based on my
underlying BE grammar. And, given that more sE speakers than BE
speakers exist and are more likely than BE speakers to be posting to
the Web, IAC, that there should be fewer examples with "that" than
without "that" is to be expected.

-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 Thu, Dec 25, 2008 at 11:39 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      zero vs. "that" relatives
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> a very small point, about the following quote from a Christmas shopper
> interviewed on NPR's Morning Edition this morning (12/25/08):
>
>   "With the market and everything being the way that it is ..."
>
> i found the "that" a bit jarring, and would have preferred a zero
> relative:
>
>   "With the market and everything being the way it is ..."
>
> a google search (with dupes removed) pulled up:
>
>   {"being the way that it is"}  270 hits
>   {"being the way it is"}  845 hits
>
> so the zero variant has it over the "that" variant by a bit more than
> 3 to 1, though the numbers for the "that" variant aren't shabby.
>
> MWDEU under "contact clauses": "Since contact clauses did not exist in
> Latin, the 18th-century grammarians looked at them askance. Lindley
> Murray 1795 termed the construction "omitting the relative" and stated
> that "in all writings of a serious and dignified kind, it ought to be
> omitted." Jespersen quotes Samuel Johnson as calling the omission of
> the relative pronoun "a colloquial barbarism" (and also notes that
> examples can be found in Johnson's letters)."
>
> in contrast, more modern handbooks sometimes suggest that relativizer
> "that" should be omitted where possible (Omit Needless Words).
>
> arnold
>
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