Edmond,

That's a very clever example.  Right branching is how English normally adds information and expands sentences, and your nesting version shows how messy structure gets for us to comprehend when we don't obey perceptual constraints.  Your discussion of intonation is especially to the point, since intonation levels are used to show things like degree of backgrounding.

If you don't mind, I'll use it with my students and credit you.

Herb


-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Edmond Wright
Sent: Sun 9/10/2006 6:55 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: On innate knowledge of language
 
> All,

As an example of the limits to nesting laid down by memory, I take the
familiar nursery rhyme, 'This is the house that Jack built' (see pages
229-32, in 'The Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes', eds. Iona and Peter Opie,
Oxford Univ. Press, 1952), and turn it round from its easy cumulative
pattern ('This is the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack
built') to the nested form: 'The malt the rat ate lay in the house that Jack
built').  Now the trick is to extend it to the point where it becomes
difficult to derive the meaning, thus:

The malt the rat the cat killed ate lay in the house that Jack built.

This can just be decoded if one is careful to say it with a lowering of
pitch and slight reduction of volume at each step up to 'killed', raising
the pitch and volume on 'ate' to match that of 'rat', and then, after
pausing for an instant there, returning to the initial pitch and volume for
the final predicate.  One has also the say 'the cat killed' rather more
quickly than the rest.

However, try this with a similar intonation structure and see if your memory
is up to the challenge:

The malt the rat the cat the dog worried killed ate lay in the house that
Jack built.

It is 'the dog worried' that has to said quickly;   the pause is still
required after 'killed', but the overall meaning keeps slipping out of one's
grasp.


Or even:

The malt the rat the cat the dog the cow tossed worried killed ate lay in
the house that Jack built.

Etc.

We and the children listening have no problem with the cumulative form:
'This is the cow that tossed the dog that worried the cat that killed the
rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.'


Edmond







Ed,
> 
>  
> 
> Interesting sentence.  It's worth noting that the passive progressive,
> with "being" has been acceptable in English only since the mid to late
> 19th c.  Up until that time, Standard English would have required
> 
>  
> 
> The train must have been repairing.
> 
>  
> 
> This older usage is preserved in the Northern construction
> 
>  
> 
> The train needs repairing.
> 
>  
> 
> which has been replaced in a lot of dialects, including, to some degree,
> Northern by
> 
>  
> 
> The train needs to be repaired.
> 
>  
> 
> or the Lower North and Southern
> 
>  
> 
> The train needs repaired.
> 
>  
> 
> Your point on grammaticality, though, is well taken.  The double "be" is
> uncomfortable for a lot of speakers for the same reason that doubling of
> other function words feels awkward and is usually resolved by haplology.
> 
>  
> 
> But grammaticality is a multi-dimensional concept, one that we tend to
> dumb down.  I use the following sentences at the beginning of my grammar
> classes to get students thinking about what we mean when we say that a
> sentence is grammatical-or ungrammatical.  The first one throws them
> consistently, especially when I tell them that it is grammatically
> unexceptionable.
> 
>  
> 
> 1.  The policeman the boy the dog bit called came.
> 
>  
> 
> 2.      "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."1
> 
>  
> 
> 3.      Me and Bill went fishing last weekend.
> 
>  
> 
> 4.      The Sears Tower was a building higher than which no other had
> ever been built.
> 
>  
> 
> 5.      That ain't no house I'd want to live in.
> 
>  
> 
> 6.      The guard couldn't have been not sleeping.
> 
>  
> 
> 7.      Upon were a there time three once bears.
> 
>  
> 
> 8.      "Then I pray all them that shall read in this little treatise to
> hold me for excused for the translating of hit."2
> 
>  
> 
> 1Chomsky, Noam A.  1957.  Syntactic Structures.  The Hague:  Mouton.
> 
> 2Caxton, William.  1490.  Prologue to his translation of Eneydos.
> Reprinted in  W. F. Bolton, ed, The English Language:  Essays by English
> and American Men of Letters 1490-1839, Cambridge:  Cambridge University
> Press, 1966.  (Spelling modernized.)
> 
>  
> 
> Herb
> 
>  
> 
> ________________________________
> 
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Edgar Schuster
> Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2006 10:46 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: On innate knowledge of language
> 
>  
> 
> I think I understand Johanna's point quite well, but perhaps I did not
> make my own point clear.  I was not trying to say that some students
> have greater CONSCIOUS knowledge of grammar than their teachers, but
> rather greater unconscious knowledge.  Let me try an example.  Is the
> following sentence grammatical or not:
> 
>      The train must have been being repaired.
> 
> I know from asking students and teachers that their answers may differ.
> But even on simpler matters, such as what modifies what in a sentence or
> how a given word functions, the intuitions of some people are stronger
> than others, in my experience.
>      This is not to deny that EVERY native speaker has an enormous
> intuitive knowledge of her or his native language.
> 
> Ed S.
> 
> 
> 
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