relative "that" again

Herb Stahlke hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM
Fri Feb 20 21:14:48 UTC 2009 

Some speakers do use a resumptive pronoun for the possessive in
relative clauses.  I know there was a fashion (18th c.?) of writing a
possessive pronoun instead of a possessive clitic, but I don't think
that ever actually represented a grammatical shift. The 's clitic goes
back to an OE case ending rather than a possessive pronoun.  But I
think the clitic and the resumptive pronoun work differently.  We
don't find other instances of possessive pronouns contracting in this
way.

Herb

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 3:39 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: relative "that" again
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      relative "that" again
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> 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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