0

I want to know if 'that' of 'that identified with ~' is a relative pronoun or a pronoun in the next sentence. And the exact meaning of 'identify with', too.

....The problem was that the part involved was that identified with "musical skill."...

Improve this question
5
  • I'd say the second instance of that in your example must be a "relative pronoun", in that syntactically it's substituting as an alternative reference to preceding the problem. Note that you can even have two consecutive occurrences of that (one as a "conjunction", one as a "relative pronoun") in contexts like He insulted my mother. It was that that upset me (but that's a bit awkward, so we'd usually switch to ...that which upset me).
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Feb 12, 2019 at 14:25
  • 1
    @FumbleFingers A demonstrative pronoun I think: the relative pronoun is omitted by whiz-deletion.
    – StoneyB on hiatus
    Commented Feb 12, 2019 at 14:54
  • @StoneyB: Ah, that's it! I knew there would be a more precise term - that's why I put "relative pronoun" in scare quotes. Not that it's obvious to me how familiarity with such terminology would help anyone actually learn English.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Feb 12, 2019 at 16:16
  • @FumbleFingers Well, it's nice to have names for the three (or four) different thats if you're going to talk about them: "He said that that that she offered was inadequate".
    – StoneyB on hiatus
    Commented Feb 12, 2019 at 17:01
  • @StoneyB: Dang! Three consecutive instances without needing to fall back on the old "use + mention" trick!
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Feb 12, 2019 at 17:09

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

The final clause may be understood either as a participle clause or as a relative clause reduced by "whiz-deletion": that is, it represents

... which is/was identified with ...

In either case it modifies the preceding noun phrase, represented by that. This that is a determiner "fused" with its deleted head, a repetition of part (in traditional grammar, it's called a "demonstrative pronoun"):

... that part ...

Restore the deletion and the fusion and you get:

The problem was that the part involved was that part which is/was identified with "musical skill."

Identified with here means approximately "declared or assumed to be the same thing as".

Improve this answer
1
  • Thank you everyone. I thought it could be like 'the part that identified with~', and you don't have to write 'the part' again since it is there as a suject.
    – Suh
    Commented Feb 12, 2019 at 21:27

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .