center-embedding (was Re: Dialects: Rel. clause subj. in interr.?)

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Jun 5, 2010, at 5:31 AM, i wrote:

>  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]

or even more parallel:

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

or without even the useful marker of structure the relativizer "that":

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

(these examples, and other variants you can find, take off on translating the right-branching structures of The House That Jack Built into center-embedded structures.)

it's not entirely an accident, of course, that Larry Horn's first stab at an example was missing an NP.  not only are these things dauntingly hard to process, they're far from easy to construct, even in print.

arnold

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