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The Noun Phrase in English: Past and present
Edited by Alex Ho-Cheong Leung and Wim van der Wurff
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 246] 2018
► pp. 187–222

Chapter 7
That-complementiser omission in N + be + that-clauses

Register variation or constructional change?

 | Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
 | Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
The omission of the complementiser that after lexical verbs, as in I think she went home or I guess she did not enjoy herself, has been studied intensively from a diachronic and synchronic perspective. In contrast, that-complementiser omission in other contexts (e.g. the truth is she never wanted to come anyway or the problem is she does not like these people) has not received much attention. We report the results of a multi-level corpus-based study investigating the diachronic development of the omission of that in the N + BE + that construction. The study is framed in the light of two competing hypotheses suggested by research on that-omission in verb complementation: the assumption that the omission is mainly a matter of stylistic choice and the assumption that it represents a case of diachronic change that can be described as constructional change or even constructionalisation. In order to test these hypotheses, we carry out a quantitative and qualitative analysis of a large dataset extracted from the Corpus of Historical American English. The results suggest that both factors are involved but shift in importance over time. While stylistic choice may have been the original motivation for the omission of that, the later development shows evidence for constructional change and signs indicating the beginning of further changes that could eventually lead to the emergence of a new construction by means of constructional split.
Keywords: complementiser omission, grammatical variability, stylistic conditioning, constructionalisation, diachronic change
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The object under investigation: Characterising the N + be + that construction
  • 3.Complementiser omission in verbal that-complementation: A short review
  • 4.Materials, methods and diagnostic criteria
  • 5.Findings I: The early development up to 1810
  • 6.Findings II: The development from 1810 to today
    • 6.1The birds’ eye view: The overall development
    • 6.2Zooming in on individual nouns
      • 6.2.1Nouns encoding epistemic certainty: Truth, fact, reality, certainty
      • 6.2.2Factual attitudinal nouns: Trouble, problem, dilemma, downside, drawback, hurdle, irony and snag
      • 6.2.3Neutral factual nouns: Thing and point
      • 6.2.4Causal nouns: Result, effect, outcome, upshot, reason
      • 6.2.5Mental nouns: Guess, idea, inference, hunch, view
      • 6.2.6Other nouns: Corollary, difference, gripe, implication, news, stipulation
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 18 June 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.246.07man
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