7.2 The “That Said” Construction 193their class of supplements, or “elements which occupy a position in linear
sequence without being integrated into the syntactic structure of the sentence”
(Huddleston and Pullum 2002 : 1350, 1265). Absolutes are traditionally under-
stood as expressing adverbial notions such as cause, condition, time, concession,
manner, and attendant circumstances (see Poutsma 1905 : 727– 728; Jespersen
1946 : 61ff.; Curme 1931 : 155– 157). In Present- day English, absolutes are often
considered rare, formal, archaic, or a Latinism , but despite some drop in fre-
quency, absolutes are still productive in English (especially in comparison with
the other Germanic languages) (see van de Pol and Petré 2015 ).
Unlike the that/ this (having been/ being) said absolute construction, having
said that/ this is best analyzed a participial “free adjunct ” (see Kortmann 1991:
6ff.; van de Pol and Cuyckens 2013 : 243– 245) marked for perfect aspect,
where that/ this serves as object of having said, and having said is assumed to
obey the “subject- attachment rule” (Quirk et al. 1985: 1121), that is, the “rule”
requiring the understood subject of the initial non- fi nite clause to be identifi -
able with the subject of the main clause.
The active form having said that may occasionally retain its literal mean-
ing in denoting the fact that the subject (or someone else) has just uttered
something:
(2) a. He delivered her to Sir John with a curt “Mary Pinkham, personal maid to
Lady Lilley, sir. She may have something to say which you’d be interested
in.” And having said that , he departed, returning to the task he had assigned
himself.” (2001 Alexander, The color of death [COCA])
b. “People assume that when you get married in Vegas, you go in willy- nilly,”
she says. “We wanted to get married and start our lives together, and we didn’t
take it any less seriously than anybody who has a huge wedding ...” Having
said that , she adds, “I will kill my daughter if she runs off and elopes, because
I want to have a big party.” (2010 Good Housekeeping [COCA])
However, the usual meaning of the construction is concessive.^1 The OED (s.v.
say , v. and interj., def. P11) defi nes having said that , that said , that being said
as occurring in concessive clauses with the meaning ‘even though this is the
case, even so; nevertheless.’ Quirk et al. ( 1985 : 623 n., 636) describe that said
and having said that as contrastive- concessive disjuncts (taking the form of
non- fi nite clauses).
“That said” has been subject to criticism in the popular literature for both its
apparent rise in frequency and its violation of the subject- attachment rule. For
example, Safi re ( 2002 ) decries that said as a “self- referential voguism” that is
“sweeping the country” but after a detailed discussion of its function, including
1 In a random collection of 100 examples of [period] that/ this said [comma] in COCA, 98% were
concessive in meaning. In a random collection of 100 examples of [period] having said that
[comma] in COCA, 94% were concessive.