A relative adverb "that"

Question

BillJAs you can see, as far as antecedents are concerned, it makes no difference in those two examples whether or not "that" is present. It is 'gap' that refers to an antecedent, not "that". In [1] gap is subject of the relative clause, and in [2] it is object.

Thank you, BillJ, for the reply.

Indeed, it is quite a new approach to English grammar and unknown to me. I can only sense (I'm a non-native) that today's grammarians leave behind Latin grammar influences on syntactic analyses in English language. Your posts have alerted me to works of contemporary linguists but I have to admit that the old 'habits' die hard.

BillJ · Accepted Answer

Anonymous
BillJAs you can see, as far as antecedents are concerned, it makes no difference in those two examples whether or not "that" is present. It is 'gap' that refers to an antecedent, not "that". In [1] gap is subject of the relative clause, and in [2] it is object.
Thank you, BillJ, for the reply.
Indeed, it is quite a new approach to English grammar and unknown to me. I can only sense (I'm a non-native) that today's grammarians leave behind Latin grammar influences on syntactic analyses in English language. Your posts have alerted me to works of contemporary linguists but I have to admit that the old 'habits' die hard.

Actually, it's not a new approach, and it's certainly not revolutionary. In fact it's been around for at least twenty years, maybe even far longer.

It's re-analysis as a subordinator is not a difficult concept to grasp. Here are just three of the reasons why it can't be a relative pronoun:

[1] There is no possibility of “that” occurring in complex relative phrases. For example, "the patients [to whom the letter was sent]" is grammatical but *"the patients [to that the letter was sent]" is of course not.

[2] The subordinator “that” has no genitive form: “The woman [whose turn it was]” is fine, but *“the woman [that’s turn it was]” is ungrammatical.

[3] The subordinator “that” (if present) always occurs in clause-initial position, e.g. “This is the article [that they were quoting from]”. But the relative words like “who”, “which” etc. are not subject to that restriction, as can be seen in examples like these: “This the article [from which they were quoting]” and "He set us a problem [the answer to which can be found in the textbook].

See what I mean?

A relative adverb "that"

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