Date: Fri, 26 Dec 1997 14:24:30 -0500

From: "Dennis R. Preston" preston[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]PILOT.MSU.EDU

Subject: Re: WEIRD EXISTENTIAL



Ron,



I will retire this comment if 'is that' turns out to be such an item, but I

wonder if you have misheard a fast speech realization of 'it is that'? This

is still odd but is at least a construction which could have been more

resonably worked into the usage you describe. This form (especially with

'just') seems to occur pretty often in quasi-apologetic 'what next' kinds

of situations.



For example,



'OK, we did that. It's (just) that we have to go on and figure out your

...' (made-up data).



Dennis



I recently had a two-hour conversation with my real-estate-lending agent. He

has a peculiar syntactic form that I wonder if is just an idiosyncrasy or if

others are familir with it as well. He begins sentences with IS THAT used as

an existential, as in



"Okay. Is that we have to see copies of your 1996 tax returns."



"Well, now, thats done. Is that we need to calculate your gross income for

1997."



This guy is a native speaker. Born in New York. Is he weird or what?



Dennis R. Preston

Department of Linguistics and Languages

Michigan State University

East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA

preston[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]pilot.msu.edu

Office: (517)353-0740

Fax: (517)432-2736