That

Last updated

That is an English language word used for several grammatical purposes. These include use as an adjective, conjunction, pronoun, adverb and intensifier; it has distance from the speaker, as opposed to words like this.

Contents

The word did not originally exist in Old English, and its concept was represented by þe. Once it came into being, it was spelt as þæt (among others, such as þet), taking the role of the modern that. It also took on the role of the modern word what, though this has since changed, and that has recently replaced some usage of the modern which.

Pronunciation of the word varies according to its role within a sentence, with a strong form, /ðæt/ ⓘ and a weak form, /ðət/ ⓘ .

Modern usage

The word that serves several grammatical purposes. Owing to its wide versatility in usage, the writer Joseph Addison named it "that jacksprat" in 1771, and gave this example of a grammatically correct sentence: "That that I say is this: that that that that gentleman has advanced, is not that, that he should have proved." [1] That can be used as a demonstrative pronoun, demonstrative adjective, conjunction, relative word, and an intensifier. [1]

Historical usage

Grave of Shakespeare Shakespeare-Tomb-Stratford.jpg
Grave of Shakespeare

In Old English, that did not exist, and was only represented by þe. [10] It originated in the north of England sometime before the 1200s and spread around the country in the thirteenth century; it then rapidly became the dominant demonstrative pronoun. [11] Before the writings of Ælfric of Eynsham, þæt was normally regularized as þe in writing, but by the time Ælfric lived, þæt was common. [12] As a pronoun, þæt was widely used in Old English, though it was later replaced by wh- words. [10] Where þe had only stood in for subjects of a clause, þæt instead took on the role of both a subject and an object, [13] and when þe and þæt were both used, þæt was always relative in orientation. [14] The symbol ꝥ ( OE thaet.png ) was used as an abbreviation, before it was phased out by the Romantic þt. [15] Similarly, yͭ was a ligature to represent that, [16] as seen in the gravestone of William Shakespeare: "Bleste be yͤ man yͭ spares thes stones". [17] In Middle English, þe was entirely replaced by þat (among other representations), before again being replaced by the modern that. [10] Among all relative markers in the English language, including who , which, whose, and what, that—through its ancient form of þæt—appears to be the oldest. [11]

In Old English translations of Latin (but only sparsely in original Old English texts), the phrase þæt an is frequently used—typically meaning "only"—but its origins and characteristics are not well-understood. [18] Frequently, the construction of þæt an was in the original Latin, which referred then to a following clause. [19] The use of þæt an was for cases in which there was exclusivity (to distinguish between general and specific objects), but translators also used it in situations where exclusivity was already given through other syntactical elements of the sentence. [20] In these texts, þæt seems to be used pleonastically (redundantly), and it began to be used as an independent adverb. [21] In the context of weather events, þæt was never used, such as in the example sentence þæt rigneð (translated as "that rains"). [22]

Similarly, for several centuries in Old English and early Middle English texts, the phrase onmang þæt (translated as "among that") persisted. [23] In the hundreds of years of its existence, it was used infrequently, though the usage was stable. [24] Even in Old English, usage of hwile ("while") was much more commonplace, with its frequency some six times as large as onmang þæt in a surveyed corpus. [25] Onmang þæt experienced grammaticalisation (turning a word into a grammatical marker), [25] and as a result of its low usage, possibly underwent a period of specialization, where it competed with other grammaticalised phrases. [26]

After verbs such as said, and more generally in introducing a dependent clause, contemporary English grammar allows the speaker to either include that or to omit it. [27] This construction—as in "I suspect (that) he is right"—is called the zero form when that is not used. [27] While there has been some analysis of the relative frequency of Old and Middle English usage of the zero form, these studies are of limited value, since they rely on unique text corpora, failing to give a general view of its usage. [28] In the late period of Middle English, the linguist Norihiko Otsu determined, the zero form was generally as popular as the form in which that is included. [29] The zero form was common in documents closely relating to speech, such as sermons, suggesting spoken English often omitted that in these contexts. [30]

Pronunciation

That is pronounced either as /ðæt/ ⓘ (strong form) or /ðət/ ⓘ (weak form) according to its grammatical role, with one as a demonstrative and the other as an anaphoric (referencing adverb). [31] In this way, the strong form represents a determining pronoun (such as in "what is that?"), while the weak form is a subordinating word (as in "I think that it's a mistake"). [32]

The pronunciation of the voiced dental fricative /ð/ may vary, such as being stopped in Cameroonian English, resulting in a pronunciation of [dat]. [33]

See also

Related Research Articles

In linguistics, declension is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and determiners to indicate number, case, gender, and a number of other grammatical categories. Meanwhile, the inflectional change of verbs is called conjugation.

In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deixis</span> Words requiring context to understand their meaning

In linguistics, deixis is the use of words or phrases to refer to a particular time, place, or person relative to the context of the utterance. Deixis exists in all known natural languages and is closely related to anaphora, with a sometimes unclear distinction between the two. In linguistic anthropology, deixis is seen as the same as, or a subclass of, indexicality.

In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech is a category of words that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are assigned to the same part of speech generally display similar syntactic behavior, sometimes similar morphological behavior in that they undergo inflection for similar properties and even similar semantic behavior. Commonly listed English parts of speech are noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition, conjunction, interjection, numeral, article, and determiner.

English grammar is the set of structural rules of the English language. This includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and whole texts.

In linguistics, function words are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning and express grammatical relationships among other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker. They signal the structural relationships that words have to one another and are the glue that holds sentences together. Thus they form important elements in the structures of sentences.

In Modern English, it is a singular, neuter, third-person pronoun.

In grammar, a future tense is a verb form that generally marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future. An example of a future tense form is the French aimera, meaning "will love", derived from the verb aimer. The "future" expressed by the future tense usually means the future relative to the moment of speaking, although in contexts where relative tense is used it may mean the future relative to some other point in time under consideration.

In syntax, verb-second (V2) word order is a sentence structure in which the finite verb of a sentence or a clause is placed in the clause's second position, so that the verb is preceded by a single word or group of words.

In Modern English, they is a third-person pronoun relating to a grammatical subject.

A dependent clause, also known as a subordinate clause, subclause or embedded clause, is a certain type of clause that juxtaposes an independent clause within a complex sentence. For instance, in the sentence "I know Bette is a dolphin", the clause "Bette is a dolphin" occurs as the complement of the verb "know" rather than as a freestanding sentence. Subtypes of dependent clauses include content clauses, relative clauses, adverbial clauses, and clauses that complement an independent clause in the subjunctive mood.

Standard Romanian shares largely the same grammar and most of the vocabulary and phonological processes with the other three surviving varieties of Eastern Romance, namely Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian.

In linguistics, a pro-form is a type of function word or expression (linguistics) that stands in for another word, phrase, clause or sentence where the meaning is recoverable from the context. They are used either to avoid repetitive expressions or in quantification.

Relative clauses in the English language are formed principally by means of relative words. The basic relative pronouns are who, which, and that; who also has the derived forms whom and whose. Various grammatical rules and style guides determine which relative pronouns may be suitable in various situations, especially for formal settings. In some cases the relative pronoun may be omitted and merely implied.

Preposition stranding or p-stranding is the syntactic construction in which a so-called stranded, hanging or dangling preposition occurs somewhere other than immediately before its corresponding object; for example, at the end of a sentence. The term preposition stranding was coined in 1964, predated by stranded preposition in 1949. Linguists had previously identified such a construction as a sentence-terminal preposition or as a preposition at the end.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hindustani grammar</span> Grammatical features of the Hindustani lingua franca

Hindustani, the lingua franca of Northern India and Pakistan, has two standardised registers: Hindi and Urdu. Grammatical differences between the two standards are minor but each uses its own script: Hindi uses Devanagari while Urdu uses an extended form of the Perso-Arabic script, typically in the Nastaʿlīq style.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English prepositions</span> Prepositions in the English language

English prepositions are words – such as of, in, on, at, from, etc. – that function as the head of a prepositional phrase, and most characteristically license a noun phrase object. Semantically, they most typically denote relations in space and time. Morphologically, they are usually simple and do not inflect. They form a closed lexical category.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English pronouns</span> Category of words in English that prototypically "stand in" for other noun phrases

The English pronouns form a relatively small category of words in Modern English whose primary semantic function is that of a pro-form for a noun phrase. Traditional grammars consider them to be a distinct part of speech, while most modern grammars see them as a subcategory of noun, contrasting with common and proper nouns. Still others see them as a subcategory of determiner. In this article, they are treated as a subtype of the noun category.

´Bëlï, or Jur Beli, is a Central Sudanic language spoken by the Beli and Sopi people of South Sudan. The Beli people are mainly found in South Sudan, a region southeast of Rumbek. The language is considered as endangered, and it is mostly spoken by the older generation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English determiners</span> Determiners in the English language

English determiners are words – such as the, a, each, some, which, this, and numerals such as six – that are most commonly used with nouns to specify their referents. The determiners form a closed lexical category in English.

References

Citations

  1. 1 2 Cheshire 1995, p. 370.
  2. ↑ Weinstein 1974, p. 180.
  3. ↑ Pavesi 2013, p. 105.
  4. ↑ Reimer 1991, pp. 194–195, 201.
  5. ↑ Mańczak 1973, p. 58.
  6. ↑ Otsu 2002b, p. 226.
  7. ↑ Sonoda 2004, p. 1.
  8. ↑ Van den Eynden Morpeth 1999, p. 121.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 Cheshire 1995, p. 378.
  10. 1 2 3 Suárez 2012, p. 80.
  11. 1 2 Cheshire, Adger & Fox 2013.
  12. ↑ Morris 1868, p. ix.
  13. ↑ Suárez 2012, p. 89.
  14. ↑ Seppänen 2004, p. 73.
  15. ↑ Honkapohja 2019, pp. 60–61.
  16. ↑ Sutherland 2020, p. vii.
  17. ↑ Bovilsky 2011, p. 292.
  18. ↑ Rissanen 1967, p. 409.
  19. ↑ Rissanen 1967, p. 412.
  20. ↑ Rissanen 1967, p. 425.
  21. ↑ Rissanen 1967, p. 417.
  22. ↑ Naya 1995, p. 28.
  23. ↑ Nykiel 2018, pp. 575, 586.
  24. ↑ Nykiel 2018, p. 575.
  25. 1 2 Nykiel 2018, p. 586.
  26. ↑ Nykiel 2018, p. 588.
  27. 1 2 Otsu 2002a, p. 225.
  28. ↑ Otsu 2002a, pp. 225–226.
  29. ↑ Otsu 2002a, p. 227.
  30. ↑ Otsu 2002a, p. 232.
  31. ↑ Poussa 1997, p. 691.
  32. ↑ Cornish 2018, p. 438.
  33. ↑ Ngefac 2005, p. 44.

Works cited

  • Bovilsky, Lara (2011). "Early modern ecostudies: From the Florentine Codex to Shakespeare (review)". Shakespeare Quarterly. 62 (2): 292–295. doi:10.1353/shq.2011.0017. S2CID   191566397.
  • Cheshire, Jenny (March 1995). "That jacksprat: An interactional perspective on English that". Journal of Pragmatics. 25 (3): 369–393. doi:10.1016/0378-2166(95)00032-1.
  • Cheshire, Jenny; Adger, David; Fox, Sue (March 2013). "Relative who and the actuation problem". Lingua. 126: 51–77. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2012.11.014.
  • Cornish, Francis (November 2018). "Revisiting the system of English relative clauses: Structure, semantics, discourse functionality" (PDF). English Language and Linguistics. 22 (3): 431–456. doi:10.1017/S136067431700003X. S2CID   125481529.
  • Honkapohja, Alpo (2019). "Anchorites and abbreviations: A corpus study of abbreviations of Germanic and Romance lexicon in the Ancrene Wisse". In Stenroos, Merja; Mäkinen, Martti; Thengs, Kjetil Vikhamar; Traxel, Oliver Martin (eds.). Current explorations in Middle English. Berlin: Peter Lang. ISBN   9783631784730.
  • Mańczak, Witold (1973). "The use and omission of the conjunction that". Linguistics. 11 (95): 51–58. doi:10.1515/ling.1973.11.95.51. S2CID   144204069.
  • Morris, Richard (1868). Old English homilies and homiletic treatises (Sawles Warde, and þe Wohunge of Ure Lauerd: Ureisuns of Ure Louerd and of Ure Lefdi, &c.) of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. London: Early English Text Society.
  • Naya, Belén Méndez (1995). "'Hit' AND 'ðæt' anticipating subject clauses in OE: True syntactic equivalents?". Neuphilologische Mitteilungen. 96 (1): 23–37. ISSN   0028-3754. JSTOR   43346052.
  • Ngefac, Aloysius (2005). "Homophones and heterophones in Cameroon English". Alizés: Revue angliciste de la Réunion: 39–53.
  • Nykiel, Jerzy (November 2018). "Onmang Þaet – Incipient grammaticalisation in Old and Middle English". Transactions of the Philological Society. 116 (3): 574–593. doi:10.1111/1467-968X.12140. S2CID   149971418.
  • Pavesi, Maria (2013). "This and that in the language of film dubbing: A corpus-based analysis". Meta: Journal des traducteurs. 58 (1): 103–133. doi:10.7202/1023812ar.
  • Reimer, Marga (1991). "Demonstratives, demonstrations, and demonstrata". Philosophical Studies. 63 (2): 187–202. doi:10.1007/BF00381687. ISSN   0031-8116. JSTOR   4320229. S2CID   170148319.
  • Rissanen, Matti (1967). "Old English þæt an 'only'". Neuphilologische Mitteilungen. 68 (4): 409–428. ISSN   0028-3754. JSTOR   43342366.
  • Seppänen, Aimo (May 2004). "The Old English relative þe". English Language and Linguistics. 8 (1): 71–102. doi:10.1017/S136067430400125X. S2CID   122524683.
  • Sonoda, Kenji (2004). "The restrictive relative pronouns that and which in BrE". Bulletin of the School of Allied Medical Sciences Nagasaki University. 17 (2): 1–4.
  • Suárez, Cristina (1 January 2012). "The consolidation of þat as an invariable relativizer in the history of English". Nordic Journal of English Studies. 11 (1): 79–107. doi: 10.35360/njes.256 .
  • Sutherland, Kristina Regan (2020). Conduct and carnival: Domestic soft power in early modern comedies (PhD). University of Georgia.
  • Otsu, Norihiko (2002a). "On the absence of the conjunction that in late Middle English". In Saito, Toshio; Nakamura, Junsaku; Yamazaki, Shunji (eds.). English corpus linguistics in Japan. Amsterdam: Rodopi. ISBN   9789042013698.
  • Otsu, Norihiko (November 2002b). "On the presence or absence of the conjunction þæt in Old English, with special reference to dependent sentences containing a gif-clause". English Language and Linguistics. 6 (2): 225–238. doi:10.1017/S1360674302000217. S2CID   120420972.
  • Poussa, Patricia (1997). "Derivation of it from Þat in eastern dialects of British English". In Hickey, Raymond; Puppel, Stanislav (eds.). Language history and linguistic modelling. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Van den Eynden Morpeth, Nadine (1999). "Jack Sprat that and the humble wh- relatives: Reconstructing social contexts by means of commercial CD-ROMS". In Tops, Guy A.J.; Devriendt, Betty; Geukens, Steven (eds.). Thinking English Grammar To Honour Xavier Dekeyser, Professor Emeritus. Peeters. ISBN   9789042907638.
  • Weinstein, Scott (1974). "Truth and demonstratives". Noûs. 8 (2): 179–184. doi:10.2307/2214785. ISSN   0029-4624. JSTOR   2214785.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.