Strokin' (Was: Re: WOTY)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 10:37 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> At 9:21 AM -0400 3/10/08, Wilson Gray wrote:
>  >Re: "stroke books"; *that's what the person that I heard say the phrase
>  >used them for.*
>  >
>  >-Wilson  [+ emphasis mine--LH]
>
>  Wow--a double center embedding in the flesh, au naturel!  Now
>  whenever I hear anyone referring to stroke books, I'll be thinking of
>  center embedding.*  Talk about different strokes for different folks!
>
>  LH
>
>  *on which there's now a nice little wiki-stub:
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_embedding.  I've actually read
>  that novel _The Embedding_ cited there, and can even sort of
>  recommend it.

There's a nice writeup on the linguablog Tenser, said the Tensor:

http://tenser.typepad.com/tenser_said_the_tensor/2006/04/the_embedding_b.html


--Ben Zimmer

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