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