"who" vs. "that"

[Laurence Horn]

At 5:00 PM -0400 7/26/09, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>Has no-one mentioned the comma "rule" -- a restrictive relative
>clause has no comma, a non-restrictive has a comma?

that was implicit in my restrictive vs. non-restrictive comments, but
it's true I didn't mention the commas per se

>While I personally do not say "that" for women (I'm more PC than that
>-- I use "who"), I think I give more credence to the comma than to
>the pronoun.

I'm not sure why "that" would be non-PC.  "which" would be pretty
insulting for animates of either sex (even with the Lord's Prayer as
evidence), but if it's "that" for restrictives vs. "who"/"which"
(depending on animacy) for non-restrictives, why would there be a
problem?  The only problem I see is a descriptive one--that
speakers/writers simply don't follow these rules.  Then there are
minor problems:  "the dead (wo)man" takes "who" in NRRs (or RRs for
non-rule followers), "the male/female corpse" takes "which", and it's
never clear where to draw the lines within the animal kingdom.

>
>Thus "Research shows women, that eat breakfast, have fewer problems
>with weight" suggests to me that women generally eat breakfast, and
>for some (perhaps other) reason have fewer problems with weight than ... men?
>
>While "Research shows women who eat breakfast have fewer problems
>with weight" suggests to me that those women who eat breakfast have
>fewer problems with weight than women who don't eat breakfast.
>
Indeed, despite the "who", assuming the commas indicate restrictiveness.

LH

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