center-embedding

[ronbutters]

As Chomsky or somebody pointed out in about 1965.


On Jun 5, 2010, at 11:25:33 AM, "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
wrote:

 From:  "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
Subject:    Re: [ADS-L] center-embedding
Date:   June 5, 2010 11:25:33 AM EDT
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
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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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org