a font that no one knows why it exists

[Laurence Horn]

Some formal philosophers are fond of the "such that" construction, which still involves a resumptive pronoun (as the "it" in the sentence below is called):

"…such that no one even knows why it exists".

Otherwise you'd need more radical surgery:

"…or any other weird computer…font whose existence no one can even explain", or whatever

The "such that" construction is available for all sorts of cases where the normal relative clause strategy (with gaps in place of pronouns) is unavailable:

"the woman such that I went to school with a guy whose younger brother married and later got divorced from her"
"the civil servant such that the governor's staff denied the claim that he was acting under official orders when he closed the bridge"

But it's not exactly English.

LH


On Mar 29, 2014, at 6:49 PM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:

> Is this sentence strange?
>
> "The notes are all computer-printed, but it's a custom font, not Wingdings or Dingbats or any other weird computer ding-dong font that no one knows even why it exists." (Cameron Edmondson, the time counter is goofy, so I can't give a time stamp)
>
> The "it" next to the end seems odd, but I'm having trouble figuring out how else to construct the clause without replacing "that" with "and."
>
> Found at https://screen.yahoo.com/broken-news-daily/secret-codes-hidden-college-library-233507140.html.
>
> Benjamin Barrett
> Formerly of Seattle, WA
>
> Learn Ainu! https://sites.google.com/site/aynuitak1/videos
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org