ATEGers:

Someone who came across my website sent me the following message:

>I am having the hardest time with this sentence:
>
>       That that that that man ate was poisonous shocked Max.
>
>What is the category of the third that?  I think it is a relative
>pronoun, but I don't know how to diagram it.

The entirely grammatical sentence that she quotes might amuse your students
and be useful in illustrating four very different roles for "that."
Someone struggling with the sentence might consider this paraphrase:

        [The fact that] [the thing] [which] [that particular] man
        ate was poisonous shocked Max.

The writer was right that the third "that" is a relative pronoun.
Honorable mention goes to the first to identify the other three that's in
the sentence.

Dick Veit
University of North Carolina at Wilmington