My language exchange partner pointed out to me today that Americans like to drop "that" from the phrase "The fact that there is/are."
I didn't think it was grammatically correct at first, but then Googling "the fact there" seems to throw up many more examples than expected. In fact, it is used in this grammar book.
The sentence is "The issue is complicated, however, by the fact there are a number of restrictions on the use of do as a substitute."
This sentence sounds unnatural to me. Can anyone shed some light on the matter?
S
is often used to frameS
as a factive clause, i.e, it's presupposed to be true. It's also used as a text padder by poor writers in cases where it's not needed and the factivity is not intended, just to try sounding more authoritative. And failing. The that is normally not deleted unless there's some reason like parallel construction for it, like The fact she came in doesn't mean she came out, where one should have either two clauses with that or two clauses without.X
means you grant thatX
exists before you even get to a verb. Here, I would agree that the that, while technically deletable, helps to mark the proper parsing -- there has more than one meaning, and so does that, and we won't even talk about be.