The Thing Is, Is

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey there, this is Ethan from Portland, Oregon.

Hi, Ethan, welcome.

Hey there, what’s up?

Hey, big fan. Great to talk to you guys.

Great to talk to you.

So, I was calling about the overuse, I don’t know if I said it, the wrong use of the phrase.

The thing of it is, is, where there’s that second is that isn’t necessary.

And, I mean, I’ve even heard the president use it, and it’s sort of like it’s an inflection thing.

Because people say, the thing of it is, is, and I feel like the second is.

People feel like the second is is necessary because of the way that the inflection of the phrase is said.

So what can you guys tell me about that?

Oh, lots. How much time do you have?

Well, the thing of it is, is, and my thing is, that’s another one, you know, my thing is.

Yeah, there’s a lot of different things.

So what’s concerning you is the two is-is next to each other.

Right, exactly.

Okay.

This is something that’s been studied since the mid-1980s by linguists.

Although we can find examples of it going back in the historical record much further than that.

And it’s something called the reduplicative copula.

And I know that’s a fancy, wonky term, but copula refers to the verb to be and its various forms and the way that it works in a sentence.

Reduplicative means that you have more than one.

Yeah, because it’s coupling the two parts.

Exactly. Reduplicative copula.

And so what we have here is something really interesting.

Bear with me while I get really wonky with this.

Yeah, please do.

There’s something called a focusing construction.

Do you know what a focusing construction is?

I do not.

Okay, so a focusing construction is when you say the thing is or the problem is or the reality is.

Those are all focusing constructions.

So those are perfectly fine.

But we also have something called a cleft sentence, which is very similar.

A cleft sentence is when you say something, instead of saying the kite is in the sky, you say the sky is where the kite is.

So you kind of take a normal sentence and just kind of reverse it.

It still means the same thing roughly, but it’s a little more awkward, still grammatical, still good English, more or less.

But we have something called the wha, the WH cleft sentence.

So these are the ones that have what and where and when and who in them.

And so you say what the sky is, is blue.

And we have these two is’s next to each other.

It’s perfectly grammatical.

No speakers really ever complain about that.

It seems normal to the native speakers here.

What the sky is, is blue.

But then we do this thing where we want to combine the focusing constructions with the cleft sentences, and that’s when it goes awry.

That’s when we have a problem.

So we end up with things like, the color of the sky is, is blue.

Right?

It’s a little awkward.

So you do get President Obama saying this.

You get absolutely every public speaker who speaks for any amount of time on the record does this because, ta-da, it turns out that most English speakers do this, but you don’t notice it most of the time.

But when you do notice it, you can’t stop noticing it.

You can’t stop it.

It’s like a loose tooth that you have to wiggle.

Every time you remember that you’ve got a loose tooth, you’re wiggling a little bit.

You’re like, oh, they’re doing it again.

So Wonk City, I know.

But what turns out, what’s really interesting thing, that last bit of evidence that it passes by the notice of most speakers might suggest that it is being considered passively grammatical by most English speakers.

That is, it passes muster.

The main thing here is reduplicative copula.

It’s got a name.

It’s being studied.

Turns out we’re doing it more.

Whether or not you have a problem with it depends on whether or not you understand where it came from.

So I’m picturing this mad scientist with a beaker of focusing construction and a beaker of cleft sentence mixing them together and creating this thing that’s making people like Ethan and me.

Oh, so you were annoyed by it.

If I hear it repeatedly from one person, from time to time, it doesn’t bother me.

But Ethan, is that your experience?

Well, I don’t know.

I tend to notice grammatical things probably more than the average person.

And I’m a little upset about certain things like that.

I think I notice it every time I hear it, and I go, !

Yeah, there’s certain people who do it an awful lot, and Obama is one of them.

The linguists have suggested, without any kind of real conviction in my opinion, they’ve suggested that what you said at the very beginning of this call may be the case.

When we say the thing of it is, we consider that a bundle, or one concrete phrase that is indivisible and acts as a unit.

And that kind of explains why it seems normal when we’re speaking off the cuff to throw in that other is right after it.

Because it’s kind of a phrase behaving almost as a noun phrase.

What’s interesting is when I’ve heard the president do it, he doesn’t use that kind of inflection.

He does it straight on.

He says, the thing of it is, and it sounds odder like that than it does with that upper, that sort of sing-songy inflection that I hear a lot.

Yeah, George W. Bush also did it.

Bill Clinton has also done it.

You’ll find that most people who are talking heads on the news channels, they do it.

I hear it in scripted speeches where the person has decided to wing it a little bit and just kind of winged it a little too much.

Well, great. That clears it up.

Thanks for the super wonky explanation.

My specialty.

Ethan, you’re not the only one.

I think the point is you’re not the only one who’s noticing this.

We’ll try to link to some information that’s comprehensible by non-linguists online and a few of the really wonky papers as well, all right?

That would be fantastic.

Oh, and I will continue to listen to the show.

Thank you very much.

Oh, I hope so.

Thanks.

We did well enough.

Okay.

We’re being rewarded.

That’s good.

Thanks, Ethan.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Phew, I was worried.

Do you think everybody else who calls into the show then has to decide whether or not to listen anymore?

That’s the case every time they turn on the radio.

So 877-929-9673.