relative "that" again

Sat Feb 21 14:09:16 UTC 2009

Gerald,

This is what is generally taught in pedagogical grammars and is widely
believed among writing teachers.  Reference grammars and grammatical
studies have found for about a century that the two thats are the
same, both of them subordinating conjunctions.  Convincing people of
this, including some linguists, is not easy.  In fact, Johan van der
Auwera, whose 1984 paper was cited by Neal Whitman earlier in this
thread, makes the interesting argument that relative that represents a
historical conflation of two Old English forms, the conjunction Te and
the demonstrative Taet (where T stands for Old English thorn), and
that its modern behavior represents that combination in being
partially pronominal.  He claims that modern relative that has not yet
fully taken on pronominal behavior but that it does have some
pronominal traits.  He addresses, in part, the question I raised as to
whether native speaker perception could change grammatical description
and answers it with a tentative yes.

Herb

On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 12:15 AM, Gerald Walton <gww at olemiss.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Gerald Walton <gww at OLEMISS.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: relative "that" again
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>
> What I learned is that the "that" in "The guy that you met" is a
> relative pronoun, meeting three criteria for relative pronouns, and
> that "that" in "I know that you met the guy" is a simple
> subordinating conjunction, whose only purpose is to introduce the
> noun clause, which is the direct object of the verb "know."
> Gerald
>
>
>>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 conjunction 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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