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Deepcosmos Posted 6 years ago
Grammar

Unusual usage of 'that'

Hello, everyone?


I’ve seen a very unusual usage of that in following two sentences. While I think the ‘that anything’ is replaced with ‘among whatever’, then the sentence would be much easier enough to understand. Is there special usage for the ‘that’, which I don’t know, while the ‘that’ seems to be a relative adverb.


1. The speed of light is the fastest that anything can move.


(allegedly extracted from an American textbook)


Reading Advanced // Unit. 8 What is light?


Light is very fast. A room gets bright as soon as you turn on a light bulb. It takes no time at all. In addition, it only takes 8 minutes for sunlight to reach the Earth. The speed of light is the fastest that anything can move.

https://pdfslide.net/reader/f/dictation-test-unit-1-what-is-a-desert-2018-10-02-alligators-and-crocodiles


2. The speed of light is the fastest that anything can move through space.


(by Steve baker, Blogger)

At least not if the laws of physics are as we believe them to be.


The two facts that matter here are:


1. The speed of light is the fastest that anything can move through space.

2. The rate of expansion of space is a uniform percentage per year - so the further away something is - the faster the space between us is increasing.


It follows from those two facts that at some distance from us - the space between some object and Earth will be increasing faster than the speed of light.

https://www.quora.com/Will-we-ever-be-able-to-venture-out-of-our-observable-universe-physically-and-explore-the-galaxies-that-may-possibly-exist-elsewhere


Always waiting for your bright reply and Best RGDS,

  

Top answer

Your question apparently has two parts, the grammar and the physics. As to the grammar, "that" is a fused relative. 1.

— AlpheccaStars

  • Your question apparently has two parts, the grammar and the physics.
  • As to the grammar, "that" is a fused relative.
  • 1.
  • The speed of light is the fastest (speed) that anything can move at.
  • But is is not the best way to phrase it: Nothing can move at a speed faster than the speed of light.
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2 Answers
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Your question apparently has two parts, the grammar and the physics.

As to the grammar, "that" is a fused relative.

1. The speed of light is the fastest (speed) that anything can move at.

But is is not the best way to phrase it:

Nothing can move at a sp
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'that' after a superlative adjective is not at all uncommon.

The home crowd cheered the loudest that it had all night.
This is the fastest that people have warmed to a new record of ours.
Balz and Johnson are the best that American political journalism has to offer.

CJ

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