ABSTRACT
In extant writings from the Early Modern English period, there are many instances of a linguistic phenomenon which, until recently, has attracted little attention from scholars of diachronic linguistics: the apparently random appearance of 'that' after conjunctions and other subordinators. In later Old English ‘the’ was replaced by ‘that’ in all the above functions and positions. Keyser’s explanation of the restrictions imposed on the occurrence of ‘that’ after subordinators in Early Modern English period is that an output condition was introduced into the grammar at this stage, barring the appearance of anything before ‘that’ at the beginning of a clause. Such combinations with ‘that’ as persist into Present-Day English, he describes as constituting a ‘small residue’. The motivation for ‘going to the back of the queue’ in this case lies in continuing association of ‘that’ with subordination: the presence of ‘that’ in the surface structure emphasises to the hearer that a new clause is beginning and that it is subordinate.
