complement marking

[Arnold Zwicky]

in our discussion, a lttle while back, of marking the complements of
verbs, the case of
   (1) V + that-S  and  (2)  V + it + that-S
came up.  verbs differ as to which of these constructions they can
occur with ("like" allows both, "hope" allows only (1)).  now, in
Virginia Heffernan's The Medium column ("Photo Negative", about
Google's Life magazine archive) in the 3/1/09 NYT Magazine (p. 15), we
find

  I get that many of these [photographs] are unpublished Kennedy
pictures.

this is an instance of (1), where i'd prefer (2), with "it" (the
Google counts for "I get that the" and "I get it that the" are noisy,
but seem roughly comparable).  the OED entry for "get" has a section
(11b) on the verb with a clause as object, but it's labeled obsolete
and rare (of course, i might have missed a subsection; the entry for
"get" is large and sprawling).  my impression is that "get" in both
(1) and (2) is informal in style.

"get" seems to be another verb that is not comfortable with zero-
marked clausal complements, in construction (3) V + S, even when no
temporary potential ambiguity is induced by omitting "that":
   ??I get I'll have to leave now.

arnold

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