Re: "Difficult" clauses

Ph.D., On 12/05/2007 05:18:
> Herman Miller wrote:
>> caeruleancentaur wrote:
>>> IMO, many sentences like these are easier to translate
>>> if they are rewritten in more "formal" English.  N.B. I did
>>> NOT say "correct" or "proper."  E.g., "what...for" often
>>> only means "why."
>>>
>>> "We spent all night talking about I can't remember what."
>>> "We spent all night talking about that which (what) I can't
>>> remember."
>> I don't think that's a very close equivalent; "that which I can't
>> remember" doesn't sound specific enough. I'm not entirely
>> sure why it doesn't sound right, but turn it around: "That
>> which I can't remember is what we spent all night talking
>> about". Does that sound right? It might be better to para-
>> phrase it as "We spent all night talking, but I can't remember
>> what it was that we were talking about." Or how about "We
>> spent all night talking about something I don't remember
>> what it was."
>
> Or, "I can't remember what we spent all night talking about."
>
> But based on the structure of the original sentence here, I
> would take it to mean, "We spent all night talking about so
> many different things that I can't even remember them."
>
> If the literal meaning were meant, I think an English speaker
> would say, "We spent all night talking, but I don't remember
> about what" or some such.
I gave this as an example of a syntactically difficult clause, which is what Taliesin asked for.

"She bought I lost count how many kinds of cheese." means "She bought x kinds of
cheese and I lost count what x is (i.e. I lost count how many kinds of cheese
she bought". The English construction allows you to combine the two clauses
into a composite, "She bought x (I lost count what x is) kinds of cheese".
Functionally, "I lost count what x is" is like a determiner/quantifier
(operating on the variable in "She bought x kinds of cheese"), paradigmatically
parallel to "... a certain number of kinds of cheese", "some number of kinds of
cheese", "every kind of cheese", and so forth.

--And.