Re: center embedding of relative clauses

Patrick Juola (patrick.juola@psy.ox.ac.uk)
Tue, 12 Mar 96 14:58:34 +0000

I think it's perfectly possible to come up with acceptable
center-embeddings. It's been remarked before that using certain
pronouns and padding with adverbs improves things:

The report which the paper nearly everybody reads regularly carried
yesterday asserted that the end was in sight.

Excellent. Wonderful. What creative scientists we all are.
So because someone's come up with a sentence that meets his
introspective definition of "acceptable," there's no phenomenon
here to explain?

I personally find it interesting that two-level embedding requires
no padding, while three or more levels require a lot of handwaving on
the part of the person presenting the sentence. No one else finds
this discontinuity worthy of investigation?

Patrick