Re: "Difficult" clauses

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Herman Miller <hmiller@...> wrote:

The point of the exercise, as I understood it, was what to do with
all those prepositions.  I thought that if they were rearranged, it
might make it easier.  I wasn't trying for an equivalent.

"We spent all night talking about I can't remember what" is the
original.

"We spent all night talking about that which (what) I can't
remember" places the preposition immediately before its object.

"We spent all night talking, but I can't remember what it was that
we were talking about," while it conveys the same idea, to me, adds
more words to the sentence.  I was not interested in "paraphrasing"
the sentence, but in "translating" it.

"We spent all night talking about something I don't remember what it
was" doesn't sound right to me.  Shouldn't there be something
after "something": "and," a period, a semicolon?

Charlie

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