R: Re: Degreesofvolitioninactivelanguages(wasRe:Chevraqis: asketch)

Nik Taylor wrote:

> J Matthew Pearson wrote:
> > Perhaps what makes the sentence jarring to modern ears is that, because we
> > expect do-support, there's a temptation to interpret "what" as questioning
> > the subject of the sentence
>
> Partly, but, for me at least, it still sounds bizarre even if you add
> do-support, "What did you hear him say else".  That else just feels like
> it doesn't belong when it's there.
Yeah.  I think "else" used thus 's acceptable in some current very
nonstandard British dialects.  But as far as Standard English goes,
it's not.  (Of course, in Shakespeare's time, there was no Standard
English.)

> > A classic example of a garden
> > path sentence is "The horse raced past the barn fell down".
>
> IS that grammatical?  I can't think of any situation where "raced past
> the barn" could be used as a relative phrase, at least in my dialect.
It can only be grammatical when you have the proper intonation, and,
in writing, punctuation:  "The horse, [caused to be] raced past the barn,
fell down."  For me, "raced" can only be a passive perfect participle for
that to be grammatical.

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Tom Wier   |     "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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