Dialects: Rel. clause subj. in interr.?

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Jun 5, 2010, at 2:29 AM, Randy Alexander wrote:

> 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.

indeed.  it's missing a subject, in this case "the rat", supplying a rat to eat the cheese and be chased by the cat:

  the cheese [1] that the rat [2] that the cat [3] that was hassled [4] by the dog [4]
  chased [3] ate [2] was rancid [1]

arnold

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