Take That

17 מרץ, 2010 ב- 21:59 | פורסם באנגלית, סמנטיקה, ראיתי-שמעתי, תחביר | 2 תגובות

I was deeply inspired by today's Dinosaur Comics. Particularly, of course, T-Rex's recursive algorithm for longer and longer repetitions of the word "that" ad nauseum. But then I thought to myself, "that" is a many splendored word. It can serve not only as a determiner but also as a pronoun, and as a complementizer in various sentential positions. So here is my modest extension of T-Rex's masterpiece, featuring five consecutive and distinct "that"s:

I know that that that "that "that"" is a rad phrase annoys her.

Or maybe even six:

I know that, that that that "that "that"" is a rad phrase annoys her.

That word kind of loses meaning when you read it a couple of times. Syntactic tree of the first version is available after the jump (no X-bar. Sorry).

True, this may not be as impressive as the Buffalo bonanza, but that one has both proper names and repetitions (in fact, only three different meanings of "buffalo" are at play).