citrin@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU (Wayne Citrin) (11/13/86)
Will someone please explain the distinction between the relative pronouns "which" and "that"? Thank you. Wayne Citrin (ucbvax!citrin)
goldberg@su-russell.ARPA (Jeffrey Goldberg) (11/16/86)
I realize that it is odd to follow up ones own posting, but there is some misleading information in my posting which is best to clarify as soon as possible. In article <215@su-russell.ARPA> goldberg@su-russell.UUCP (Jeffrey Goldberg (that's me)) writes: > The COMP >people use a(n) historical argument that is rather subtle. The >deictic pronoun "that" and the sentential COMP "that" evolved from >a common source (a pronoun). The split between the two occurred >prior the development of the "that" in RCs. Historical linguistic >theory predicts that one will never find a COMP turning into a PN, >while the other direction is just fine. Therefore the "that" in an >RC can't be a PN or RP. > I will say that a majority of modern syntacticians believe >in the RP analysis without question. Actually, the particular argument I mentioned for the COMP analysis has not appeared in print. The argument (if I represented it at all accurately) is due to Nancy Wiegand Assistant Professor of Linguistics and English at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. My previous posting suggested that this idea had been around for a while, while in fact Wiegand's argument has not appeared in print and has not been distributed. The RP argument has been around for quite a while and has worked its way into many accounts relative clauses. For a recent example see Gerald Gazdar's "Unbounded Dependencies and Coordinate Structures" in Linguistic Inquiry 198[12]. I do not, of hand, know the original source for that argument. In general, much of what I post the this newsgroup is based on the work of various colleagues and instructors. Given the informality of USENET I have not made citations that I would have in a more scholarly write-up. So I ask that if anyone wants to use of refer to anything that I have posted, please get in touch with me to get the appropriate references. In the future I will try to be careful about attribution of ideas. In the past I have only cited what I would call recommended reading. Because of the immediacy and the vastness of the net many ideas of "prepublication nature" get distributed in an informal way. This means that when we sit down to work we must take an extra effort to find the sources of various ideas and facts which may have been developed through our contact with the net. I realize that there are probably no more than a handful of professional linguists reading sci.lang (at least the ratio of postings about grammar/spelling/usage flames to issues of "the science of language" seem to suggest this.) I still feel that it is important to point this out. Jeff Goldberg ARPA: goldberg@russell.stanford.edu, goldberg@csli.stanford.edu UUCP: ...!hplabs!russell.stanford.edu!goldberg cryptography, terrorist, DES, drugs, cipher, secret, decode, NSA, CIA, NRO. The above is food for the NSA line eater. Add it to your .signature and you too can help overflow the NSA's ability to scan all traffic going in or out of the USA looking for "significant" words. (I am told that this is no joke.)
harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad) (11/17/86)
In article <16381@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>, citrin@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU (Wayne Citrin) writes: > Will someone please explain the distinction between the relative pronouns > "which" and "that"? The technical distinction concerns "restricted vs nonrestricted clauses." Fowler had proposed that these should formally distinguish where one or the other can be used, because otherwise usage seemed to be varying randomly. A restrictive clause is one whose removal would alter the basic message of a sentence. According to this RC/NRC rule, it should be introduced by "that": Helen's is the face that launched a thousand ships. A nonrestrictive clause is supplementary, incidental or even parenthetical to the basic message of the sentence: Helen's face, which was not unblemished upon close inspection, launched a thousand ships. A heuristic rule is that usually a nonrestrictive clause is or can be set off by commas, whereas a restrictive one can't. That having been said, let me add that Fowler's tentative proposal for bringing order to the arbitrary use of which and that was itself rather arbitrary, since there are perfectly good examples where say, "that" is preferable in an NRC for emphasis and "which" is preferable in an RC to avoid a proliferation of "that"'s or simply to preserve or restore a good anglo-saxon flavour. Rules are for pedants and analphabets; stylists will always adapt them to the uncodifiable higher purposes literary language is really meant for. -- Stevan Harnad (609) - 921 7771 {allegra, bellcore, seismo, rutgers, packard} !princeton!mind!harnad harnad%mind@princeton.csnet
unbent@ecsvax.UUCP (Jay F. Rosenberg) (11/18/86)
In article <217@mind.UUCP>, harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad) writes: > > Rules are for pedants and analphabets; stylists will always adapt them > to the uncodifiable higher purposes literary language is really meant > for. Would that it were so! I have spent uncounted hours restoring 'which's that had dutifully been altered to 'that's by presumably-well- educated copy editors obeisant to the restrictive/non-restrictive clause rule. Since 'that' does journeyman work as a demonstrative pronoun and as a subordinating conjunction, I (a philosopher, whose professional interests often require special attention to those grammatical roles) have developed a style in which 'which' tends, fairly generally, to replace 'that' in its additional relative pronoun role. By "developed a style" I mean that I write in such a way that the sentences not only convey what I wish them to convey but also *sound* right. Such considerations, however, are simply lost on copy editors, whose horizons, as far as I can determine, characteristically extend no further than Webster's, Fowler's, and their own publishers' style sheets. JAY ROSENBERG Dept. of Philosophy UNC Chapel Hill, NC 27514 ========================================================================= ...{decvax,akgua}!mcnc!ecsvax!unbent unbent@ecsvax.UUCP ...tucc!tuccvm!ecsvax!unbent unbent@ecsvax.BITNET =========================================================================
michaelm@bcsaic.UUCP (Michael Maxwell) (11/19/86)
In article <16381@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>, citrin@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU (Wayne Citrin) writes: > Will someone please explain the distinction between the relative pronouns > "which" and "that"? There is some (rather equivocal) evidence that wh-words like "which" occupy a different "slot" in COMP from complementizers like "that." I know of no good arguments for this in Modern English (although I believe people said things like "the book which that you saw" in earlier periods of English). But there are arguments for a distinction from other languages, e.g for Bavarian German; cf.: %A Josef Bayer %D 1984 %T Towards an explanation of certain that-\fIt\fP phenomena: The COMP-node in Bavarian %B Sentential Complementation %E W. de Geest and Y. Putseys %P 23-32 %I Foris Publications %C Dordrecht Apparently you can say things equivalent to "I wonder who that you saw" in Spanish, at least in some dialects. But even if wh-words in other languages are distinct from complementizers, it doesn't necessarily follow that they are in English. -- Mike Maxwell Boeing Advanced Technology Center ...uw-beaver!uw-june!bcsaic!michaelm
anderson@uwmacc.UUCP (Jess Anderson) (11/20/86)
In article <2363@ecsvax.UUCP>, unbent@ecsvax.UUCP (Jay F. Rosenberg) writes: > [...] Since 'that' does journeyman work as a demonstrative pronoun and as a > subordinating conjunction, I (a philosopher, whose professional interests > often require special attention to those grammatical roles) have developed a > style in which 'which' tends, fairly generally, to replace 'that' in its > additional relative pronoun role. By "developed a style" I mean that I > write in such a way that the sentences not only convey what I wish them to > convey but also *sound* right. Such considerations, however, are simply > lost on copy editors, whose horizons, as far as I can determine, > characteristically extend no further than Webster's, Fowler's, and their own > publishers' style sheets. Sounds like a man with a mission to me. There are copy editors and copy editors, and doubtless some have horizons limited as you describe. But perhaps you are overlooking the obvious: what sounds right might not be right. On the which/that matter, and long after I had begun to have copy-editing as one of my professional activities, I had it approximately backwards, as it *sounded* wrong to me to do it the other way round. But, encouraged by a colleague (you know, one of those wild, flaming arguments such as can only be fueled by a difference of opinion about "what's right") I looked in a dictionary for guidance. I used the American Heritage. Now as we all know, there is no official body akin to the Academie francaise for English (for which thank god, in my opinion) that decides what is currently correct pro forma. So we have to make our own decisions, using such guides as may be available. I earnestly believe that the guides you find fault with (there are many other valuable ones) serve you and all other authors well, that is, better than you think. The end purpose, after all, is consistently clear communication. Naturally, that does not mean mindless homogenizing of individual styles. But in certain basic features of the language, some normative tendencies confer definite advantages. I believe the current canon on which/that (apparently opposite to your own style) is one of these. A final note: philosophy was one of my undergraduate majors, and I find a *far* higher incidence of 'which' that should be 'that' in scholarly prose, especially philosophy, history, and literary criticism, than in technical, journalistic, or other domains. Nothing personal intended, but I think there's an academic snobbism at work in the topic area, perhaps not in your case, but it's hard to imagine why this problem occurs more often (if in fact it does) in academic circles. [Oh oh, now I'm going to get some heat!] -- ==ARPA:====================anderson@unix.macc.wisc.edu===Jess Anderson====== | UUCP: {harvard,seismo,topaz, 1210 W. Dayton | | akgua,allegra,ihnp4,usbvax}!uwvax!uwmacc!anderson Madison, WI 53706 | ==BITNET:============================anderson@wiscmacc===608/263-6988=======
mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (11/25/86)
>... (a philosopher, whose professional interests >often require special attention to those grammatical roles) have developed a >style in which 'which' tends, fairly generally, to replace 'that' in its >additional relative pronoun role. By "developed a style" I mean that I >write in such a way that the sentences not only convey what I wish them to >convey but also *sound* right. Such considerations, however, are simply Humpty-Dumpty also believed that he had the right to be master over the meanings of his words. The question is whether what you write uses the same language as your readers believe it does. If you alter the rules, and write your personal language enough, it will sound right to you, and mislead your audience. After having had copy-editors alter hundreds of my "which"s to "that"s, I now find improper usage really grating. The restrictive/non-restrictive distinction is always important, and sometimes non-redundant. If you don't stick to it when the reader CAN restore the meaning, how will the reader know what you mean when he/she can't? For example " ... letter confusions which maintain the word envelope ..." is quite different from " ... letter confusions that maintain the word envelope ..." but if you use "which" and "that" inconsistently, how will anyone know what you mean? I use this example deliberately, because a theoretical argument happened to turn on such a mis-use. -- Martin Taylor {allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt {uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsri!dciem!mmt