LINGUIST List 2.553

Mon 23 Sep 1991

Disc: That's

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1. , Re: 2.545 Linguist
2. Lionel Moser, Re: 2.544 That's

Message 1: Re: 2.545 Linguist

If, as R. Hudson writes, "the chair on thats cushion I sat" is out due
to a clash between the formality of pied piping and the informality of
"thats", then aren't all the key cases that purport to show a P-that
restriction not attributable to complementizer status for 'that'
 out for the same reason (e.g. "the chair on that I sat"). Or is
there some perceived distinction between the two cases of pied piping?
-David Pesetsky

Message 2: Re: 2.544 That's

Dick Hudson writes (Thu, 19 Sep 91)
 ...
 > Incidentally, THATS is always pronounced with Schwa, which
 > distinguishes it quite clearly from demonstrative THAT.
I'd like to point out that this kind of evidence (as to which
type of THAT `that' is) is, as far as I know, not available in N.
American English, viz., British English has two pronunciations of
`that', one for the COMP and the other for the PRON. (In my Cana-
dian English they are pronounced identically, but in Britain the
syntactic category affects the pronunciation.)
In "the book thats cover is red" I think Dick is saying that it
is pronounced as a pronominal `that', ruling out a previously
suggested analysis (I'm not sure it was serious) as an elliptic
form for "the book that its cover is red".
Lionel Moser
School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences
University of Sussex