| would you say "John calling" is a noun phrase almost identical
to "his
calling" where "calling" is a genitive functioning as a
noun? |
|
No. There is nothing genitive going on here.
It's (among other things) a Whiz-Deletion.
That will be John who is calling. So
calling is part of the verb phrase
is calling. The underlying relative clause
seems to be used adjectivally to describe John, so it also
seems possible to analyze
calling as a present participle modifying
John. But this is deceptive.
The structure is similar to, but not an exact match to, a cleft sentence like
It is John who is calling, derived from the underlying
John is calling. But here we have dummy
It, whereas with
That we have a referring expression. (Note the position of
John in
John is calling vs.
That is John.) So this too is deceptive.
In fact, I think the best analysis is that the element
That is being modified by
(who is) calling.
That (person) who is calling will be John. / That calling (person) will be John. So the noun phrase you may be looking for is the underlying
That calling, which does not occur in that form at all in the surface structure of
That will be John calling.
Compare:
That's Mary standing by the bench. / That person standing by the bench is Mary.
That's Mary beside the bench. / That person (who is) beside the bench is Mary.
[Here we see quite clearly that
Mary beside the bench is not a constituent, so it cannot be a noun phrase. In the same way,
John calling is not a constituent of the original sentence you asked about.]
______________
And note the ambiguity that can occur with this structure:
Those are the children in the water. / Those children (who are) in the water are the children (you are looking for). [Answers a question like
Where are the children?]
Those are the children in the water. / Those children are those
particular children who are in the water -- not the other children who
are on the beach. [Answers a question like
Which children are those?]
[In the first of these, there is no constituent of the form
the children in the water. In the second version, the noun phrase
the children in the water does occur.]
CJ