Dialects: Rel. clause subj. in interr.?

[Laurence Horn]

At 6:33 AM -0700 6/5/10, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>On Jun 5, 2010, at 6:14 AM, Randy Alexander wrote:
>
>>  On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 8:31 PM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> 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 #.  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
>>>
>>
>>  Ha; that too.  :)
>>
>  > I didn't catch that.  The one I meant was the non-parenthetical last
>  > sentence: "The same remedies apply, so just as X, Y.
>>
>>  X = extraposition helps on the ones below, turning the center
>>  embedding into right branching structures
>>
>>  Y = ???
>
>Y = reordering NP subjects so that the relative 
>clauses are right-branching helps in The House 
>That Jack Built examples ("the dog that hassled 
>the cat that chased the rat that ate the cheese 
>that was rancid").
>
>so there's missing material, of two different 
>kinds -- one in the text itself, one in the 
>quoted example,
>
>arnold
>
What he said.

I didn't really *try* to illustrate the 
difficulty of processing center-embedded 
structures by failing to keep track of the 
subjects and predicates, but I have to admit it's 
not the first time.  On the other hand, as I 
think we've discussed here in the distant past, 
there are cases in which a third level of 
embedding are easier to process, namely when the 
innermost subject is deictic, esp. a first person 
pronoun.  (I think Dwight Bolinger may have been 
the first to point this out.)  Here's an attested 
case (uttered by Tony DeGrate, winner of the 
Vince Lombardi trophy as a college senior at the 
U. of Texas, upon being cut from Green Bay 
Packers professional football team, which had won 
five championships under their legendary coach 
Vince Lombardi) and two constructed examples. 
Much easier to deal with than the one with the 
rats, cats, dogs, and/or rancid cheese, and I'm 
pretty sure I have the right number of subjects 
and predicates.


It's ironic that I'm here, where the man [the 
trophy [I won Ø] is named after Ø] coached.

The man [that the woman [I love Ø] is married to Ø] is insanely jealous.

The difficulty [that someone [I know Ø] is having 
Ø with center embedding] is...

LH

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