center-embedding

[Joel S. Berson]

At 6/5/2010 09:22 AM, you wrote:
> >  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.

Computer programmers should handle these easily.  A last in-first out
stack (+ for what goes on, - for what goes off):

The (+cheese (+the rat (+the cat (+the dog hassled-) chased-) ate-)
was rancid-)

Joel

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