That

Question

Hi.It is on Saturdays that she does much of her grocery shopping.Is that a relative pronoun or a conjunction in this cleft sentence?Thank you.

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

AnonymousIs that a relative pronoun or a conjunction in this cleft sentence?

I don't see why it cannot be both.

Anonymous · Answer

Thank you, MM, for your reply. I've thought the same but wasn't sure as I'm lacking in the native-speaker intuition.

RandomGuy · Answer

According to Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey Pullum it’s a subordinator (subordinating conjunction).

Here is their argument:

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[70]
…
iii It was with considerable misgivings [that her parents agreed to this proposal].
iv It was in order to avoid this kind of misunderstanding [that I circulated a draft version of the report].
…

That as a subordinator (not a relative pronoun)

Traditional grammar analyses the that which introduces relative clauses as a relative pronoun, comparable to which and who, but we believe that there is a good case for identifying it with the subordinator that which introduces declarative content clauses.

(a) Wide range of antecedent types and relativised elements

If that were a pronoun, or pro-form, its use would be much wider than that of the uncontroversial relative pronouns, or indeed of any pro-form at all in the language. Compare:

[71]
i They gave the prize to the girl [that spoke first]. ................................... [who]
ii. Have you seen the book [that she was reading]? ................................ [which]
iii He was due to leave the day [that she arrived]. ................................... [when]
iv He followed her to every town [that she went]. ..................................... [where]
v That’s not the reason [that she resigned]. ............................................[why]
vi I was impressed by the way [that she controlled the crowd]. ................ [*how]
vii It wasn’t to you [that I was referring]. ................................................. [no wh form]
viii She seems to be the happiest [that she has every been]. ...................[no wh form]

It would not only cover the ground of all the simple ‘wh’ words put together, as shown in [i–v]: it would also appear in a variety of constructions where no ‘wh’ word could replace it, as in [vi–iii]. Particularly important here is the cleft construction shown in [vii], and in [70iii–iv] above. Note that, leaving aside the disputed case of the relative construction, there is no pro-form in English that takes as antecedent such complements and adjuncts as to you (in the sense it has in [71vii]), with considerable misgivings, in order to avoid this kind of misunderstanding, and the like. Instead of postulating a pro-form with such an exceptional range of use, we are saying that that relatives do not contain any overt pro-form linked to the antecedent: they simply have an anaphoric gap, like bare relatives.

(b) Lack of upward percolation

There are no that relatives matching wh relatives with a complex relative phrase:

[72]
i a. the woman [whose turn it was] ......... b. *the woman [that’s turn it was]
ii. a. the knife [with which he cut it] .........b *the knife [with that he cut it]

If that were a pronoun we would have to stipulate that it has no genitive form, and that it never occurs as complement of a preposition — or rather that when it is a complement of a preposition the latter must be stranded, for the knife that he cut it with is quite grammatical. The severe restrictions here stand in sharp contrast to the remarkable versatility of the putative pronoun that illustrated in (a). In the analysis where that is a subordinator the ungrammaticality of [72ib/iib] is predictable. Subordinators do not inflect and must occupy initial position; there is no relative word and hence no possibility of the relative feature percolating upwards into a larger constituent.⁹

(c) Finiteness

That relatives are always finite, as are the declarative content clauses introduced by that. Note, then, that we cannot insert that into non-wh relative infinitivals like a knife to cut it with— cf. *a knife that to cut it with. If that were a pronoun this would be a special fact needing explanation, but under the subordinator analysis it is exactly what we would expect, given that that is a finite clause subordinator.¹⁰

(d) Omissibility

As we have noted, that can be regarded as very largely omissible in relative clauses in the same way as in declarative content clauses. The conditions under which omission is prohibited are not the same in the two cases […], but in both they have it in common that they are related to the need to mark explicitly the beginning of a subordinate clause under certain structural conditions. And in both cases, moreover, that is more readily omitted in simple structures than in complex ones. There is no pro-form in English that is systematically omissible under remotely similar conditions.

⁹There are non-standard regional dialects of English in which that’s do occur, as in the man that’s leg was broken. We do not believe that such examples necessitate a pronoun analysis for the dialects concerned, and certainly they do not establish this analysis as valid for all dialects.
¹⁰The force of this argument is diminished by the fact that which can’t occur here either: we have a knife with which to cut it, not *a knife which to cut it with. The absence of *a knife with that to cut it is then already covered under point (b). Nevertheless, the analysis of that as a finite clause subordinator does provide a very general account of why the only type of bare relative clause that can’t be expanded by means of that should be the infinitival one.
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(from The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language)

CalifJim · Answer

Aspara GusAccording to Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey Pullum it’s a subordinator (subordinating conjunction).
... That as a subordinator (not a relative pronoun)

If this isn't a direct contradiction to another opinion you once quoted by the same authors, I'll eat my hat.

Note there:

Re: It was the prize that was the problem.
CalifJim: ... this is not considered a relative clause.
Aspara Gus: It is by Huddleston and Pullum

So what's the latest? "that was the problem" is still a relative clause, but it's not introduced by a relative pronoun?

I wonder what they'll come up with next year.

CJ

RandomGuy · Answer

CalifJimIf this isn't a direct contradiction to another opinion you once quoted by the same authors, I'll eat my hat.

I don’t see any contradiction here. Their opinion is that that is never a relative pronoun: “…we are saying that that relatives do not contain any overt pro-form linked to the antecedent: they simply have an anaphoric gap, like bare relatives.”

CalifJim · Answer

Aspara GusI don’t see any contradiction here.

I didn't think you would.

So anyway, you're saying that the following exchange comes about because H&P say that that was the problem is a relative clause without an explicit statement of the relative pronoun, or in their terminology, a relative clause without an overt pro-form. Right?

Re: It was the prize that was the problem.
CalifJim: ... this is not considered a relative clause.
Aspara Gus: It is by Huddleston and Pullum

If I'm right so far, then I think H&P are also saying, in the case of these cleft sentences, that the relative clause in question doesn't contain a covert pro-form either. Does that make sense?

CJ

RandomGuy · Answer

CalifJimIf I'm right so far, then I think H&P are also saying, in the case of these cleft sentences, that the relative clause in question doesn't contain a covert pro-form either.

They would say it contains a covert ‘relativized element’, represented by a gap:

It was the prize that __ was the problem.

CalifJim · Answer

Aspara GusThey would say it contains a covert ‘relativized element’, represented by a gap:It was the prize that __ was the problem.

That's amazing, because there is no antecedent for the gap, which there would be in

THAT was the prize that ___ was the problem; the other prize wasn't the problem. (Antecedent prize.)

CJ

RandomGuy · Answer

CalifJimthere is no antecedent for the gap

How about the prize? And what about in It's John to whom I'm referring? You're saying whom has no antecedent?

I still don’t see the contradiction. Care to spell it out?

CalifJim · Answer

Aspara GusCare to spell it out?

I think I've having trouble understanding the tree you posted here:

More generally, I don't see how the CGEL analysis of the which-clause differs between 1 and 2 below. They function differently, and I'm inclined to say that the first one is not a relative clause, but the residue of a clefted sentence in which 'the table' has been highlighted. Only in the second one does the which-clause specify which table the speaker is referring to.

1 It is the table which is broken. (not the chair) (Answers What is broken?)
2 That's the table which is broken. (not the other table) (Answers Which table is broken?)

If there is an antecedent for which in 1, it is the initial "it", not specifically "the table", thus: *It which is broken is the table. The which-clause here does not help us to identify which table. It only specifies some broken thing whose identity is unknown (until we read the predicate).
_______________

By analogy, in It's John to whom I'm referring? I'm saying whom has no antecedent that corresponds to the kind of antecedent that other relative clauses have, i.e., the clause doesn't modify the noun John here as it "should" if it wants to be a "real" relative clause. Here again "it" is the antecedent: *It to whom I'm referring is John.

I see these as variants of the pseudo-clefts or "fused function" situations:

What is broken is the table.
*Who I'm referring to is John.
_______________

Syntactic structure of the it-cleft
The foregrounded element functions as complement to be. The subject is invariably it, a meaningless dummy pronoun. The backgrounded element is expressed as a relative clause, with the foregrounded element as antecedent for the relativised element, here who.

My quibble (or one of them) is with the part in orange. I think they've got the wrong antecedent (if you can even call it an antecedent).

_______________

As I see now, the use of that instead of which complicates things tremendously (not for traditional grammar, but within the CGEL program), so let's save that for later.

CJ

That

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