Timeline for Pesky 'that' removal - what is this construction generally known as?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
18 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:38 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://english.stackexchange.com/ with https://english.stackexchange.com/
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| Oct 10, 2014 at 16:24 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackEnglish/status/520610851774935040 | ||
| Oct 10, 2014 at 4:00 | history | edited | Sven Yargs |
edited tags
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| Oct 10, 2014 at 3:41 | answer | added | Sven Yargs | timeline score: 1 | |
| Sep 30, 2014 at 16:11 | comment | added | Howard Pautz | @JohnLawler - as if by a magical fantasy grammar incantation an answer exemplifying the effects of untrustworthy intuition appears. (This_comment: vebosity-level = 9, obfuscation-level = 9 :) | |
| Sep 30, 2014 at 2:54 | answer | added | ultrasawblade | timeline score: 0 | |
| Sep 15, 2014 at 22:06 | comment | added | John Lawler | People might believe anything at all about English grammar; I've stopped being surprised. Fantasies abound everywhere. That (or a Wh-word) is needed when it is the subject of the relative clause. Otherwise it's not. That's the real grammar rule (for relative clauses, at least -- there are other uses of that in other clauses). Native speakers know this rule, unconsciously, and follow it in unmonitored speech; but they are rarely taught about English grammar in school, so they don't trust their intuitions, or know how to talk about them. | |
| Sep 15, 2014 at 21:55 | comment | added | Howard Pautz | @JohnLawler - bingo - got it! And perhaps the (more commonly used?) counter example is why people occasionally think a 'that' is needed where it's not? (Aside to tchrist - another thing I find pesky :) | |
| Sep 15, 2014 at 21:50 | comment | added | John Lawler | @HowardPautz: Take out the I think from the example sentence and you get a relative clause with that as subject, where it can't be deleted. There is an expression that comes from ... is fine, but delete that and you get *There is an expression comes from .... | |
| Sep 15, 2014 at 21:27 | history | edited | Howard Pautz | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
update w/ link
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| Sep 15, 2014 at 21:22 | comment | added | tchrist♦ | @HowardPautz AHAH! It is the editor who is pesky then! | |
| Sep 15, 2014 at 21:21 | comment | added | tchrist♦ | @JohnLawler I’ve never been very successful at banishing whose. | |
| Sep 15, 2014 at 21:17 | comment | added | tchrist♦ | “Pesky”? Could you please explain how it pesks you? | |
| Sep 15, 2014 at 21:02 | history | edited | Howard Pautz | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
clarification after a comment
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| Sep 15, 2014 at 20:58 | comment | added | John Lawler | As long as the relative pronoun is not the subject of the relative clause, it's deletable, provided that the next thing after the deletion is a noun phrase. Two noun phrases in a row are a parsing signal to push down and begin parsing a relative clause. | |
| Sep 15, 2014 at 20:27 | history | edited | Howard Pautz | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
cleaned up, shortened removed stuff that probably irked picky readers :-P
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| Sep 15, 2014 at 19:07 | comment | added | John Lawler | This isn't whiz-deletion; whiz-deletion deletes the relative pronoun and a form of be. There's no be verb here; the relative clause is extracting the relative pronoun from the subject of comes from, which is a complement clause of I think. So it's just optional relative pronoun deletion, which is possible whenever the relative pronoun is not the subject of the following clause (which is isn't, here -- I is the subject of the clause following that). So you can keep the that or drop it, as you please, as long as what follows the antecedent is another noun phrase. | |
| Sep 15, 2014 at 18:33 | history | asked | Howard Pautz | CC BY-SA 3.0 |