7.2 The “That Said” Construction 1997.2.3.1 Development of That/ This Having Been Said. The earliest
examples of that/ this having been said date from the mid to late twentieth cen-
tury, as shown in (3) and (4).^7 The meaning is concessive in all cases.
(3) a. their goodness is therefore the same as the goodness of the Four Beginnings”
(TGCS., A, 17.5b). But that having been said , it does not mean that the
difference ... has disappeared (1990 Kalton, Critical issues in Neo- Confucian
thought [COHA])
b. That having been said , I don’t think we need to talk about punishment in this
regard. (1990 CNN_ Crossfi re [COCA])
(4) a. That he himself does not set great store by them follows from his concluding
remark: “But this having been said , we may well ask ourselves if it is not
futile to attempt to explain something which” (1969 Kracauer, The last things
before the last [COHA])
b. H o w e v e r , this having been said , Taylor points out that “it is not just suffi -
cient to denounce a wrong view,” (1992 ReVision [COCA])
I conclude that the having been form appears extremely late and could not pos-
sibly have been the source for the more reduced forms.
7.2.3.2 Development of That/ This Being Said. Historical evidence
of that/ this being said presents a more complex picture. Although the form
is not common, it appears – as predicted by Jespersen ( 1946 : 55– 57; see
above) – in the sixteenth century (see examples in 5 and 6). We note that
this is the predominant pronoun; for example, a 400- million word sample
of EEBO^8 yields 80 examples of this being said and only 2 examples of that
being said.
(5) a. This being said , towart the port thai stevin [‘directed their course’] (1513
Douglas, Æneis v.i.57 [OED])
b. Go ye therefore, and stand to your fi rst fayth vowed to your king, for I must
go to my father: this being said , he dyed. (1574 Bale, The pageant of popes
[EEBO])
c. And this I will say, that in iudging me, you iudge more then me in it. This
being said , it pleased her Maiesty to iudge that Espilus did the better diserue
her (1598 Sidney, The Lady of May [ED])
7 Evidence from Google Books suggests the use of this/ that having been said occurs fi rst in legal
language, records of parliamentary proceedings, and technical documents, but does not enter
wider user until the mid twentieth century.
8 This corpus has been developed by Mark Davies of Brigham Young University; I refer to it
as BYU- EEBO. All examples collected from this corpus have been checked against the
Chadwyck- Healey EEBO.