relative "that" again

[Wilson Gray]

Why not analyze

The guy that's sister married your cousin ...

as

The guy that his sister married your cousin ...

-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 Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 12:19 PM, Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      relative "that" again
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>
> 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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