Omission of relative pronoun

[Joachim Pense]

I hope this is not a FAQ. Today, my co-worker in Michigan sent me an instant
message "The XYZ job used to run for 5 hours now takes only 2". So he
omitted the "which" relative pronoun, which is not standard English if the
word the relative clause relates to is the subject of the relative clause.

I recall having seen this usage occasionally before. Is it widespread
colloquial English?

I also vaguely recall (but am not quite sure) that Crystal in "The Stories
of English" mentions that this was also common in earlier stages of modern
English.

Avoiding this usage seems to make sense to me, as it makes the sentences
difficult to parse.

Joachim

[James Hogg]

The Linguistic Atlas of England, map S5, shows that the omission of the
relative pronoun in subject position used to be widespread in England
(except in the West Midlands). You can hear it in Scotland too: "It's an
ill burd fyles its ain nest." It's also common in Irish English, where
the proverbial advice to slow down is. "The man made time made
plenty of it."

People who grew up with this usage have no difficulty parsing it. They
can also stick in a "that" when they feel like it.

--
James

[John Lawler]

James is right, and it's even more widespread in AAVE,
as Bill Labov quoted:

"Ain't no cat can't get in no coop".

But why resort to relative clauses at all?

Except for the lack of a comma, excusable in a conjunct this short,
I read it at first [brackets around deleted material I supplied] as

The XYZ job used to run for 5 hours[, and] now takes only 2.

instead of

%The XYZ job [that] used to run for 5 hours now takes only 2.

(Of course, the second construction isn't native to my idiolect,
though I've encountered it and would recognize it; but the first
construction *is* native to me.)

Note that in speech the two sentences would have different
rhythm and intonation. Speech has much more bandwidth
than writing, and can never be neglected.

Note also that the meanings are the same -- they both describe
the same situation. The conjunction is much simpler (has less
"structure") than the relative clause, and therefore has many
more reduction rules available, like Headline 'And'-Deletion,
as in "Sanford Apologizes, Weeps". This is probably because
parsing the simple situations don't require much marking, and
doesn't have to cope with so many individual exceptions.

Relative clauses have much more "structure" and are correspondingly
harder to parse; they also occur frequently enough as it is to
occasion
more than their share of anxiety in writing, since syntactic
"structure"
is what makes people worry about whether they're getting it "right".
Or furious about others getting it "wrong", e.g:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1918

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1920

-John Lawler http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue
Happy Hogswatch All and may Gods Bless Us, Every One.
(Atheists may request the vegetarian alternative.)

[John Dean]

Joachim Pense wrote:
> I hope this is not a FAQ. Today, my co-worker in Michigan sent me an
> instant message "The XYZ job used to run for 5 hours now takes only
> 2". So he omitted the "which" relative pronoun, which is not standard
> English if the word the relative clause relates to is the subject of
> the relative clause.
>

Telegraphese STOP Unsurprising STOP Used to be telegrams now IM and Email
STOP
--
John Dean
Oxford

[Peter Moylan]

txt msgs evn wrs

--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.

[annily]

Joachim Pense wrote:
> I hope this is not a FAQ. Today, my co-worker in Michigan sent me an instant
> message "The XYZ job used to run for 5 hours now takes only 2". So he
> omitted the "which" relative pronoun

Or he omitted a "but" after "5 hours" :)

--
Long-time resident of Adelaide, South Australia,
which may or may not influence my opinions.

[Robert Bannister]

I do get mildly irritated at what appears to be a growing habit of
joining two clauses with a totally unrelated "which". I wrote that too
soon which I meant to find a good example for.

--

Rob Bannister

[Stan Brown]

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:54:08 +0100 from Joachim Pense <snob@pense-
mainz.eu>:

>
> I hope this is not a FAQ. Today, my co-worker in Michigan sent me an instant
> message "The XYZ job used to run for 5 hours now takes only 2". So he
> omitted the "which" relative pronoun,

Actually, he omitted "that".

Either way, I don't think it's colloquial.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Shikata ga nai...

[Nick]

annily <ann...@ihopethisdoesntexist.com> writes:

> Joachim Pense wrote:
>> I hope this is not a FAQ. Today, my co-worker in Michigan sent me an instant
>> message "The XYZ job used to run for 5 hours now takes only 2". So he
>> omitted the "which" relative pronoun
>
> Or he omitted a "but" after "5 hours" :)

My thoughts were in the same direction, but went "; it".
--
Online waterways route planner: http://canalplan.org.uk
development version: http://canalplan.eu

[Joe Fineman]

James Hogg <Jas....@gOUTmail.com> writes:

> The Linguistic Atlas of England, map S5, shows that the omission of
> the relative pronoun in subject position used to be widespread in
> England (except in the West Midlands). You can hear it in Scotland
> too: "It's an ill burd fyles its ain nest." It's also common in
> Irish English, where the proverbial advice to slow down is. "The man
> made time made plenty of it."

I think of it as occurring mainly in songs, for the sake of the meter:

There was a frog lived in a spring
There's a man comes to our house every single day

But perhaps those songs come out of one of those dialects.
--
--- Joe Fineman jo...@verizon.net

||: One of us has to be reasonable, and it had better be you. :||