John,
   My take on it is a little different. My guess (instinct) is that he 
was headed for saying "There's not a sleeping disorder out there they 
can't cure," but realized that they can't really cure the disorder, but 
they can "vastly improve the quality of your life."
   I suspect that's what you mean by "meaningful force." I tend to think 
through my writing (as I write), so it's old hat for me to be half way 
through a sentence and realize I can't go where I'm headed. I don't 
think it's a sentence that would be likely to show up in writing unless 
the writer was being lazy. I think the speaker is probably well aware 
that his thinking was shifting as he went.
     What I do encounter quite a bit is what I call "you painted 
yourself into a corner' sentences, where someone comes to me hoping I 
can give them just the right way to finish a sentence when the solution 
is really to go back to the start and rewrite the whole thing. I don't 
think this sentence can be "corrected" by changing the way it ends. He 
wrote himself into a corner and then changed direction rather than 
backtracking and starting over.
   "They can help you a lot. For every sleeping disorder, they have ways 
to improve a person's quality of life."

Craig

John Dews-Alexander wrote:
> I want to throw a sentence to the members of this listserv and see 
> what comes back!
>  
> When I teach composition or linguistics, I like to stress the 
> relevance of analyzing "mistakes" (clear deviations from Standard 
> Written English and/or outright ungrammatical utterances) in order to 
> find the meaning behind them. In nearly all instances of speech or 
> writing, we are attempting to convey meaning. When something comes out 
> wrong, there is still a meaningful force behind it, and, sometimes, we 
> can puzzle out what meanings were trying to break through. If we can 
> figure out what we were trying to say, it is a lot easier to try again!
>  
> I recently ran across an utterance that piqued my nerdy interest. Here 
> it is:
>  
> "They can help you a lot. There's not a sleeping disorder out there 
> that they can't vastly improve the quality of your life."
>  
> The speaker is participating in a documentary about sleeping 
> disorders. He is a narcoleptic, and English is his first language. 
> When he says "they," he is referring to sleep specialists and other 
> such medical professionals.
>  
> Do you think that this is just a mistake that happens in live speech 
> because his "filter" couldn't keep up with his rate of speech? Or is 
> there meaning here that can be analyzed by those interested in such 
> things? Would it be going too far to suggest that he may be "forcing" 
> agency front and center in the clause "that they can't vastly improve 
> the quality of your life"? Did he realize half way through that he 
> wanted the emphasis to be on the doctors, not the disorder? Is there 
> an ellipsed "by treating" or some other extension at the end of the 
> sentence that he thinks is understood?
>  
> I'd love to hear any comments on what happened here. Thanks!
>  
> John Alexander
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>

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