relative "that" again

[Herb Stahlke]

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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