Editing That (section)

== Historical usage ==
[[File:The Book of Margery Kempe, Chapter 18 (clip).png|thumb|"... by the grace that god put ..." (Extract from the ''[[The Book of Margery Kempe]]'']]
[[File:Shakespeare-Tomb-Stratford.jpg|thumb|[[Shakespeare's funerary monument|Grave of Shakespeare]]]]
In [[Old English language|Old English]], ''that'' did not exist, and was only represented by ''{{Lang|ang|þe}}'' (the).{{sfn|Suárez|2012|p=80}}{{efn|The [[Th (digraph) |digraph {{angbr|th}}]]  was written using the letter [[Thorn (letter)|thorn]], {{angbr|þ}}.}} It originated in the north of England sometime before the 1200s and spread around the country in the thirteenth century; it then rapidly became the dominant demonstrative pronoun.{{sfn|Cheshire|Adger|Fox|2013}} Before the writings of [[Ælfric of Eynsham]], ''{{Lang|ang|þæt}}'' was normally regularized as ''{{Lang|ang|þe}}'' in writing, but by the time Ælfric lived, ''{{Lang|ang|þæt}}'' was common.{{sfn|Morris|1868|p=ix}} As a pronoun, {{Lang|ang|þæt}} was widely used in Old English, though it was later replaced by ''wh-'' words.{{sfn|Suárez|2012|p=80}} Where ''{{Lang|ang|þe}}'' had only stood in for subjects of a clause, {{Lang|ang|þæt}} instead took on the role of both a subject and an object,{{sfn|Suárez|2012|p=89}} and when ''{{Lang|ang|þe}}'' and {{Lang|ang|þæt}} were both used, {{Lang|ang|þæt}} was always relative in orientation.{{sfn|Seppänen|2004|p=73}} 

The symbol {{angbr|ꝥ}} ([[File:OE thaet.png|OE thaet.png]], [[Thorn with stroke]] or 'barred thorn')  was used as an abbreviation, before it was phased out by the Romantic {{char|þͭ}} ([[File:Middle English that.svg|class=skin-invert-image|alt=thorn with superscript t]]).{{sfn|Honkapohja|2019|pp=60–61}}{{efn|A letter thorn 'crowned' with a letter t, {{unichar|00FE}} + {{unichar|036D|cwith=◌}} }} During the latter Middle English and [[Early Modern English]] periods, thorn, in its common script or [[cursive]], form, came to resemble a ''y'' shape. With the arrival of [[movable type]] printing, the substitution of {{angbr|y}} for {{angbr|Þ}} became ubiquitous, leading to the common ''[[The#''Ye'' form|ye]]'', as in '[[Ye Olde]] Curiositie Shoppe'.{{efn|One major reason for this was that {{angbr|y}} existed in the printer's [[Movable type|types]] that [[William Caxton]] and his contemporaries  imported from Belgium and the Netherlands, while {{angbr|Þ}} did not.<ref name=Hill>{{cite book |title=The Routledge Handbook of the English Writing System |isbn=9780367581565 |chapter=Chapter 25: Typography and the printed English text |first=Will |last=Hill |date=30 June 2020 |chapter-url=https://arro.anglia.ac.uk/id/eprint/703215/1/25HillFinalDV.pdf |page=6 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |quote=The types used by Caxton and his contemporaries originated in Holland and Belgium, and did not provide for the continuing use of elements of the Old English alphabet such as thorn <þ>, eth <ð>, and yogh <ʒ>. The substitution of visually similar typographic forms has led to some anomalies which persist to this day in the reprinting of archaic texts and the spelling of regional words. The widely misunderstood ‘ye’ occurs through a habit of printer’s usage that originates in Caxton’s time, when printers would substitute the <y> (often accompanied by a superscript <e>) in place of the thorn <þ> or the eth <ð>, both of which were used to denote both the voiced and non-voiced sounds, /ð/ and /θ/ (Anderson, D. (1969) The Art of Written Forms. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, p 169) |access-date=7 July 2022 |archive-date=10 July 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220710022857/https://arro.anglia.ac.uk/id/eprint/703215/1/25HillFinalDV.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>}}  Thus {{angbr|yͭ}} replaced {{angbr|þͭ}} as the ligature to represent ''that'',{{sfn|Sutherland|2020|p=vii}} as seen in the gravestone of [[William Shakespeare]]: "{{Lang|en-emodeng|Bleste be yͤ man yͭ spares thes stones}}".{{sfn|Bovilsky|2011|p=292}}  In [[Middle English language|Middle English]], ''{{Lang|ang|þe}}'' was entirely replaced by {{Lang|enm|þat}} (among other representations), before again being replaced by the modern ''that''.{{sfn|Suárez|2012|p=80}} Among all relative markers in the English language, including ''[[Who (pronoun)|who]]'', ''which'', ''whose'', and ''what'', ''that''—through its ancient form of ''{{Lang|ang|þæt}}''—appears to be the oldest.{{sfn|Cheshire|Adger|Fox|2013}}
In Old English translations of [[Latin]] (but only sparsely in original Old English texts), the phrase ''{{Lang|ang|þæt an}}'' is frequently used—typically meaning "only"—but its origins and characteristics are not well-understood.{{sfn|Rissanen|1967|p=409}} Frequently, the construction of ''{{Lang|ang|þæt an}}'' was in the original Latin, which referred then to a following clause.{{sfn|Rissanen|1967|p=412}} The use of ''{{Lang|ang|þæt an}}'' was for cases in which there was exclusivity (to distinguish between general and specific objects), but translators also used it in situations where exclusivity was already given through other syntactical elements of the sentence.{{sfn|Rissanen|1967|p=425}} In these texts, {{Lang|ang|þæt}} seems to be used [[pleonasm|pleonastically]] (redundantly), and it began to be used as an independent adverb.{{sfn|Rissanen|1967|p=417}} In the context of weather events, {{Lang|ang|þæt}} was never used, such as in the example sentence ''{{Lang|ang|þæt rigneð}}'' (translated as "that rains").{{sfn|Naya|1995|p=28}}

Similarly, for several centuries in Old English and early Middle English texts, the phrase {{Lang|ang|onmang þæt}} (translated as "among that") persisted.{{sfn|Nykiel|2018|pp=575, 586}} In the hundreds of years of its existence, it was used infrequently, though the usage was stable.{{sfn|Nykiel|2018|p=575}} Even in Old English, usage of ''{{Lang|ang|hwile}}'' ("while") was much more commonplace, with its frequency some six times as large as {{Lang|ang|onmang þæt}} in a surveyed corpus.{{sfn|Nykiel|2018|p=586}} {{Lang|ang|Onmang þæt}} experienced [[grammaticalisation]] (turning a word into a grammatical marker),{{sfn|Nykiel|2018|p=586}} and as a result of its low usage, possibly underwent a period of specialization, where it competed with other grammaticalised phrases.{{sfn|Nykiel|2018|p=588}}

After [[Verb|verbs]] such as ''said'', and more generally in introducing a [[dependent clause]], contemporary [[English grammar]] allows the speaker to either include ''that'' or to omit it.{{sfn|Otsu|2002a|p=225}} This construction—as in "I suspect (that) he is right"—is called the zero form when ''that'' is not used.{{sfn|Otsu|2002a|p=225}} While there has been some analysis of the relative frequency of Old and Middle English usage of the zero form, these studies are of limited value, since they rely on unique [[text corpus|text corpora]], failing to give a general view of its usage.{{sfn|Otsu|2002a|pp=225–226}} In the late period of Middle English, the linguist Norihiko Otsu determined, the zero form was generally as popular as the form in which ''that'' is included.{{sfn|Otsu|2002a|p=227}} The zero form was common in documents closely relating to speech, such as sermons, suggesting spoken English often omitted ''that'' in these contexts.{{sfn|Otsu|2002a|p=232}}