Nested phrases [was Re: Want - but cannot get - a nested class to inherit from outer class]

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:26:25 -0800, castironpi wrote:

> Humans have enormous "mental stacks"--- the stacks the contexts the
> speakers speak in push things they're hearing on to.

This is not true.

Human beings have extremely shallow mental stacks, limited by short-term 
memory. Most people are capable of keeping seven, plus or minus two, 
items in short term memory at once. Any more than that and they are 
subject to fading away or being over-written.

Grammatically, it doesn't take many levels to confuse most people, and 
even the best and brightest can't keep track of hundreds of levels, let 
alone "enormous" numbers. At least, not unless you consider five to be 
enormous.

Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct" has some excellent examples of 
such "top heavy" phases, such as:

    He gave the girl that he met in New York while visiting
    his parents for ten days around Christmas and New 
    Year's the candy.

    She saw the matter that had caused her so much anxiety 
    in former years when she was employed as an efficiency 
    expert by the company through.


Fortunately the English grammar, which is very strict about word order 
(Pinker describes it as "tyrannical") allows alternate forms that are 
easier for our shallow stacks to deal with:

    He gave the candy to the girl that he met in New York 
    while visiting his parents for ten days around 
    Christmas and New Year's.

    She saw the matter through that had caused her so much 
    anxiety in former years when she was employed as an 
    efficiency expert by the company through.


Pinker also describes situations where the words can be grouped into 
phrases as you go, and so are easy to comprehend:

    Remarkable is the rapidity of the motion of the wing 
    of the hummingbird.

and a counter-example of a perfectly grammatical sentence, with only 
THREE levels, which is all but unintelligible:

    The rapidity that the motion that the wing that the 
    hummingbird has has has is remarkable.

These nested "onion sentences" are exceedingly difficult for the human 
brain to parse. In fact, I'm betting that at least 90% of people will, on 
first reading, will question whether it could possibly be grammatically 
correct.



-- 
Steven