Timeline for Are there rules about using "that" to join two clauses?
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20 events
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| Aug 14, 2015 at 13:44 | comment | added | John Lawler | Sort of. There's a set of rules called "cyclic" rules, which apply bottom up from the lowest clause, but may be reapplied in a higher clause if their conditions are met. Cyclic rules are governed by predicates and structures in one clause, in most cases; Passive is an example. Then there are noncyclic rules, which can move material from arbitrarily far away in the sentence, as long as it isn't across an island boundary, like Relative Clause Formatoin. Material affected by a rule on a lower cycle becomes available to rules on a higher cycle. | |
| Aug 14, 2015 at 9:16 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | @JohnLawler Hmm but it's been deleted after it's been moved, right? "That's the man [ deleted pronoun] they say stole the Mona Lisa." Does that mean that there's kind of an order in which the rules are applied? | |
| Aug 14, 2015 at 1:36 | comment | added | John Lawler | It was filled, and then the NP that was the subject was moved by a different rule that doesn't care about subjects or anything, leaving behind a tensed clause with a subject moved (note -- not deleted). | |
| Aug 14, 2015 at 1:03 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | @JohnLawler But what about "the subject slot hasta be filled in a tensed clause"? ;-) | |
| Aug 13, 2015 at 15:40 | comment | added | John Lawler |
Not quite. Relative clause formation extracts the subject of Indef stole the Mona Lisa and moves it to the beginning of the higher clause: (Indef) they say ... stole the M.L. There Indef would become either who or that if allowed to reproduce, but since it's no longer the subject of the clause it introduces (they say stole the M.L.), it's now deletable. It started out as a subject of a tensed clause, but since it moves to a position before that clause, that's not relevant yet. Movement rules change relations like subject and object.
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| Aug 13, 2015 at 13:34 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | @JohnLawler That explanation won't quite work, or at least with relative clauses. Reason is that we can delete the subject of any tensed embedded clauses within the relative clause. For example: "That's the man they say stole the Mona Lisa" | |
| Nov 22, 2014 at 14:49 | comment | added | John Lawler | What about Who's the girl that kissed you this morning? The that can't be deleted there because it's the subject. And that can be the subject of just about any restrictive relative clause. The important point is that the subject slot hasta be filled in a tensed clause; infinitives and gerunds frequently have only implied subjects (Bill told Mary to take out the garbage vs Bill promised Mary to take out the garbage). This has nothing to do with Who-questions, incidentally. | |
| Jul 12, 2014 at 20:41 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | @VincentMcNabb I know this is an old post but in case people are reading, you can drop that in who questions. As with other restrictive relative clauses if it's not the subject of the RC it can be dropped "Who's the girl (that) you saw this morning?" | |
| Feb 12, 2014 at 6:15 | comment | added | Drew | I will only add that "can be dropped" does not imply "should be dropped". It's a judgment call, case by case, based on considerations of your reader and of possible ambiguity or misunderstanding. See answers by Joshua and @Sven. IOW, it is not necessarily a great idea to conclude that it is a rule of good style to drop "that" whenever possible because it constitutes only fluff. "That"s that are not strictly necessary can sometimes improve understanding. | |
| Oct 30, 2013 at 5:05 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| Oct 30, 2013 at 5:21 | |||||
| May 1, 2013 at 13:46 | comment | added | John Lawler | That can only occur in restrictive relative clauses; non-restrictive clauses use wh-words. | |
| Jan 20, 2012 at 14:32 | comment | added | Peter Shor | Can't you can only drop "that" as a relative pronoun if it is restrictive? | |
| Mar 18, 2011 at 9:42 | history | edited | avpaderno | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Oct 28, 2010 at 18:52 | comment | added | Tsuyoshi Ito | As for the third paragraph, the relative pronoun “that” cannot be omitted if it is used as the subject in the relative clause. It has nothing to do with the word “who” in the main clause. For example, “that” cannot be omitted in the sentence “Where are the eggs that were in the basket?” or “The eggs that were in the basket are now in the fridge.” (The first example is taken from usingenglish.com/forum/ask-teacher/…) | |
| Sep 1, 2010 at 14:44 | comment | added | RegDwigнt | I would add that "that" usually cannot be dropped when it's an adverb (meaning "very", "so much", "really", "particularly"). If you drop "that" in the sentences "I'm not that stupid" or "it wasn't that difficult", you get a slightly different meaning (I'm not stupid at all, it wasn't difficult in any way). And if you drop "that" in the sentence "I was that happy I started to cry", you get a completely different meaning (I enjoyed crying). All three examples are still perfectly grammatical without "that", but the meaning is different. | |
| Sep 1, 2010 at 14:10 | history | edited | RegDwigнt | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Aug 18, 2010 at 3:02 | vote | accept | avpaderno | ||
| Aug 17, 2010 at 7:39 | history | edited | Vincent McNabb | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Aug 17, 2010 at 7:30 | history | edited | Vincent McNabb | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Aug 16, 2010 at 23:36 | history | answered | Vincent McNabb | CC BY-SA 2.5 |