Re[2]: center embedding of relative clauses

Steve_Finch_at_TTSGMD@thomtech.com
Tue, 12 Mar 96 13:52:17 EST

But the key question is "Why?" After all, I have no trouble whatsoever
writing horribly centre-embedded lisp or C code. To provide an answer
such as "it is simply the way the human sentence processing mechanism is
(and here's the evidence)" begs the deeper question "Why is the HSPM
such that it only processes certain constructions?" Now, this latter
question is not just about processing mechanisms, but is likely to be
about deeper issues in the nature of language which, as the original
poster pointed out, haven't yet been addressed (as far as I can tell).

Steve.

______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: center embedding of relative clauses
Author: Mark Johnson <Mark.Johnson@grenoble.rxrc.xerox.com> at INTERNET
Date: 3/12/96 1:20 PM

> 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?

Lots of us do! There's a long literature on the topic, to which I
(and another poster to this topic, Henry Thompson) have contributed.