Dialects: Rel. clause subj. in interr.?

[Randy Alexander]

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 11:51 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> At 9:08 PM +0000 6/4/10, RonButters wrote:
> >"unacceptable" means that they follow regular grammatical rules but
> >are hard to process. Like, "the horse raced by the barn fell" and
> >"the oyster the oyster split split"
>
> Rigbt, and the center-embedding effect with those starred examples
> below prompts such a diagnosis, in which case they would end up
> trading in their * for a #. Â The same remedies apply, so just as
> extraposition helps on the ones below ("Did it please you than John
> showed up?"), turning the center embedding into right branching
> structures ("The cheese that was eaten by the rat that was chased by
> the cat that was hassled by the dog was rancid" as opposed to "*The
> cheese that the cat that the dog hassled chased ate was rancid").
>
> LH

I think there should be more to that last sentence.

--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
Blogs:
Manchu studies: http://www.sinoglot.com/manchu
Chinese characters: http://www.sinoglot.com/yuwen
Language in China (group blog): http://www.sinoglot.com/blog

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org