a font that no one knows why it exists

[Geoffrey Steven Nathan]

It surprises me that nobody has pointed out why this construction is necessary. Many moons ago Haj Ross discovered that certain kinds of relative clause were impossible (actually, it was more than relative clauses, but I'll keep it simple).

If the noun being modified by a relative clause, in this case 'font', is separated from the place where it is 'understood' to have originated by a sentence that begins with a WH word, the relative clause will be bad:

..weird computer font [ that nobody knows [WHY ___ exists] ]

As Haj pointed out, this construction can be 'saved' by replacing the gap with what is called a resumptive pronoun, but, at least in English, these tend to sound clunky or worse.
FWIW, in some languages (such as Arabic) relative clauses with resumptive pronouns are just fine.

The same phenomenon occurs when constructing WH questions:

What did you find [that nobody believed [WHO lost _____ ] ] ?
vs.
What did you find [that nobody believed [WHO lost it] ] ?

The second is better than the first, which is almost word salad.

Haj called it the 'WH-island constraint', because he said nothing could be 'moved out of' a clause headed by a WH word. Chomsky later called it 'subjacency'. I haven't kept up with syntactic theory recently to know if that's what it's still called.

Geoffrey S. Nathan
Faculty Liaison, C&IT
and Professor, Linguistics Program
http://blogs.wayne.edu/proftech/
+1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)

Nobody at Wayne State will EVER ask you for your password. Never send it to anyone in an email, no matter how authentic the email looks.


----- Original Message -----

> From: "Benjamin Barrett" <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM>
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Sent: Saturday, March 29, 2014 6:49:15 PM
> Subject: a font that no one knows why it exists

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM>
> Subject: a font that no one knows why it exists
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

> 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

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