Arrant Pedantry


Relative Pronoun Redux
















16 Responses to Relative Pronoun Redux

  1. Eugene says:

    Your explanation of the “wh- system” and the “that system” is probably the most useful thing I’ve read on this topic. We do have competing systems with overlapping functions. There’s no need to over-regulate it by arbitrarily deciding that one pattern is correct and the other incorrect.
    Another case is the matter of “have got” that was recently discussed on Grammar Girl.
    Commenters were all bent out of shape, thinking that “I’ve got” is wrong because it means the same thing as “I have.” Now, I wouldn’t automatically concede that the meaning or use of the two expressions is exactly the same, but even if that were true, one is a present perfect and one is a stative. They represent two systems that overlap in meaning, but they probably differ in function, at least potentially.

  2. Thanks, Eugene. I’m glad you found it useful.

    “Have” versus “have got” is a pretty good comparison. They overlap considerably, but not exactly. But that’s no reason to eliminate the overlap and force them into some sort of complementary distribution.

  3. Warsaw Will says:

    A couple of points – I think this where the EFL/ESL approach to grammar is far superior to traditional grammar teaching – we tell students they have a choice between both ‘who’ and ‘that’ and ‘which’ and ‘that’ in defining (restrictive) relative clauses, and take a much more realistic (descriptive) attitude to other ‘controversial’ areas such as the use of ‘whom’ and personal pronouns.

    But I’m not so sure about ‘have got’. In British English at least, I would argue that it is simply an idiomatic version of ‘have’ for possession (in the grammatical sense). In British learner’s dictionaries it is listed under ‘have’, not ‘get’. Once you see it as it as the present perfect of ‘get’ you get into all sorts of problems, for example that it has something to do with ‘obtaining’ something, which is of course nonsense. ‘She’s got red hair and three beautiful children’. ‘Have got’ is not simply a tense of ‘get’ in this use. We can’t use continuous forms, and for past and future we have (got) to revert to ‘have’; I can’t see that ‘have got’ in this sense is any less stative than possessive ‘have’. Funnily enough this is something foreign learners seem to ‘get’ much better than some native speakers I’ve seen on language forums who start trying to connect it with ‘get’.

  4. John Lawler says:

    Welcome to the ranks of Christmas that/which rule posters. Somehow, it seems to have become a tradition, one way or another.
    Here’s my own entry, from long long ago. Sometimes repetition works.

    And, who knows? Maybe the horse will sing.

  5. Warsaw Will: I think you’re right that it’s just an alternative to “have”, though it’s not just for possession. At least in the US, it works for obligation too: “I have to go” == “I’ve got to go”. But the point is that they overlap, and there’s no need to concoct a rule to tell you when to use one or the other.

    John: I hadn’t realized it was a Christmas tradition, though it appears one of my posts on it last year was just two days before Christmas. Thanks for sharing.

  6. Eugene says:

    Having read John Lawler’s excellent entry at least once previously and again today, I still think that Arrant Pedantry framed the issue in a useful way. Part of this blog/comment process is about thinking things through.
    Warsaw Will has got some good points. “Has got” is idiomatic and may be used in ways that don’t seem like they are in perfect aspect. Still, its historical origin is the perfect construction, and that’s really the point I wanted to make. If a perfective situation and a state overlap in meaning, that’s not surprising.
    Now, if I’d said that Will has made some good points, or has suggested some good ideas, those would be in perfect aspect, so maybe “has got” isn’t so far from perfect.
    On the other hand, the North American use of “have gotten” is clearly perfective, so maybe that’s what the got/gotten distinction is really about.
    On the language pedagogy of that/which, I agree that ESOL teacher’s are pragmatic and descriptive even while steering students toward standard, uncontroversial uses. I certainly wouldn’t teach language learners an absolute “rule” like that=restrictive and which=unrestrictive. However, if you acknowledge that “that” is always restrictive while non-restrictive inanimates usually take “which,” you can see that the zombie that/which rule could be a useful compensation strategy for language learners. It won’t cause any errors in their production. As they read more at more advanced levels, they’ll discover that good writers use “which” restrictively, and they’ll incorporate that usage into their internal grammars.

  7. Warsaw Will says:

    @Jonathan Owen – point taken, and of course “have got to” is widely used in the UK as well, it’s just that in EFL we see it as a different structure. But I think it rather strengthens my point about it being idiomatic and analogous to Present simple. Again we have to use forms of “have to”, not “got to” for past and future.

    @Eugene – it’s interesting that in BrE, where we don’t have the option of “gotten”, when we really do want to use “have got” as the Present perfect of “get”, we usually add something to make the meaning clear, for example “I’ve just got myself a new car”.

    And on the point of EFL students and “which” or “that”, I think it very much depends on the student’s first language. For example the words used as relative pronouns in Polish have other meanings (eg interrogatives) which correspond directly to “who” and “which”, so it’s easier for them to use “which”, but in French and Spanish, they are more like “who” and “that”, and I’ve heard that in France EFL students prefer to use “that”.

    And if I can blow my own trumpet, I also have a couple of posts on this:

  8. BZ says:

    You mentioned this only in passing, but I was taught that the reason is never why and the reason is never because. The reason can only be that. If you don’t want two thats in your sentence, you can omit the why-that. “The reason why x is because y” becomes “the reason x is that y”. Oddly enough, “the reason why x” sounds completely unremarkable to me, while “the reason is because y” grates. Do you know anything about these “rules,” and do they have anything to do with the which/that distinction?

  9. Eugene says:

    @BZ: I’d be interested in Motivated Grammar’s take on relative clauses modifying “reason,” too.
    In the meantime, I’ll take a crack at it.
    WHY: “the reason (why)…” is part of the wh- system. Notice that it is optional, not being a subject. Some consider the usage redundant in edited English.
    THAT: “the reason (that)…” is part of the that system discussed above. It, too, is optional.
    IS BECAUSE: This is a different type of structure. It’s not a relative clause like the other two. It’s a subject complement to a copula. So you have an NP: “the reason x” followed by a copula “is” and an adverbial phrase in the subject complement position, “because y.” Subject complements are usually locative prepositional phrases, adjective phrases, or noun phrases. I think what’s maybe a little unusual is to have what looks like an adverbial taking the role of a nominal. Maybe it could be considered a headless relative clause.
    Most of us would choose a that- clause in place of the because- clause.

  10. Jonathon says:

    BZ: They don’t directly have anything to do with the that/which distinction, except inasmuch as a lot of people have made bad rules about relative pronouns and adverbs because they don’t understand the system. You’re asking about two different usage questions: what sort of relative can follow reason, and what sort of subject complement structure it can take.

    As Eugene says, reason why is part of the wh system. Reason that is just a relative adverbial use of that. I believe that strictly speaking, the wh words are not optional. Deletion of a relative word only occurs where that is allowed, except in subject position. So insisting on reason that just adds another needless irregularity to the wh system of relativization, and insisting on plain reason with a zero relative adds even more irregularity.

    Reason is that/because is a separate issue, and Gabe Doyle covers it quite nicely at Motivated Grammar.

  11. Eugene says:

    Well, if you have a zero relativizer, there’s no way to know whether it would have been a wh- or a that, is there?
    The MWDEU entries on “REASON why” and “REASON is because” are excellent, as is the Motivated Grammar post you’ve linked to.
    Interesting. Thanks.

  12. BZ says:

    Thanks all for the info.

  13. John Cowan says:

    I concede that that that is bad, but that which doesn’t seem to me much better: the non-clunky form of fused relatives is what, producing they want what they can’t have.

    “And do they know the where and when? / And shall Trelawny die? / Here’s fifty thousand Cornish men / Will know the reason why!” How lame that rousing song would be without its final monosyllable.

  14. Eugene: The simpler analysis is to view the zero (deleted) relative as a subset of that, since it shares its syntactic constraints, and to say that the wh words are not deletable. Some linguists believe that relative that is just a form of complementizer that, which is also deletable. If they’re related, it would also explain why relative that has some of the weird syntactic constraints that it does—because it’s not truly a pronoun.

    John: My example was indeed pretty clunky, though the point stands that that which is grammatical while that that is not. Perhaps an example like That which does not kill us makes us stronger would have been better.

  15. Catterel says:

    I have just come across your site – what a treasure! I’m intrigued by ‘as’ as a relative pronoun, eg “Handsome is as handsome does”, “the fruit as maids call medlars” (even Shakespeare used it in this way). Is it purely dialect, where it’s still alive and thriving, is it a corruption of ‘that’, or is there any research available on this subject? Thank you for any information you may wish to share.

  16. Pingback: That which is restrictive | Sentence first

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