Re: OT: Who said it?

[David Auerbach auerbach@xxxxxxxx]

On Sep 9, at 6:23 PM, Harry Binswanger wrote:
> While we are at it (and talk about "off-topic"!), here's a favorite
> example of the need for punctuation:
> John where the teacher had had had had had had had had had had the
> teacher's approval.
>
> Punctuated:
> John, where the teacher had had "had had," had had "had"; "had had"
> had the teacher's approval.
I don't like to count quote marks, as used above, as punctuation. 
(Although it is an interesting question: what is punctuation?).
Either quotes are a functor (taking a word to its name) or a device
for forming names of expressions. Neither role seems that of
punctuation. Thus, I only count 5 occurrences of "had" in that
sentence. (Of course, I do see two occurrences of ""had had"" and one
of ""had"").
A totally different sort of example (but it leapt to mind), are those
old that show how our brains treat center-embedding differently from
left-emedding:
Men shoot   (grammatical and understandable when spoken)
Men men shoot shoot (grammatical and understandable when spoken)
Men men men shoot shoot shoot (grammatical and brow-wrinkling)

(for the succintness-philic try:
Police police
Police police police police
Police police police police police police)
(Oh, the examples of arbitrarily deep embeddings that we do
understand are on the order of the house that Jack built ...  or
what's that old Burl Ives song(?), "I don't know why she swallowed
the fly..")



David Auerbach
Department of Philosophy & Religion
Box 8103
Raleigh, NC 27695-8103                  http://
slowfoodusa.org
auerbach@xxxxxxxx                  http://
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