Thursday, February 5, 2015

relative clauses - Understanding 5 consecutive "that"s in this sentence

(This sentence was told as an entertainment by my English teacher 8 years ago.) She presented us with the following sentence:




She said that that that that that he said was wrong.





I had a bit of trouble trying to figure out what each that means, and am still having a bit of trouble even now.



After killing my brain for hours on this, I worked this out:




  • There are only 3 predicate verbs in the sentence, so there should be exactly 2 that's that start a subclause

  • No two consecutive that's can have a solid meaning, or it's a grammar error

  • Given the above two points, the second and the fourth that's are starts of two subclauses, and the first, the third and the last thats have a solid meaning.

  • The first that and the whole subclause led by the second that are appositive. Similarly, the third that and the subclause led by the fourth that are appositive.




The sentence now looks like this:



She said *that* that *that* that *that* he said was wrong.
| | | | | |
| | | inner - 1 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
| | 2 ~~~~~~.....................~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 3 - outer



It's then that problems arise. I can't understand why the last that is fine here. If the above ideas are correct, then the third that is the object of the innermost subclause (marked as 1), and the last that doesn't serve as any structural element in that clause.



What's the role of the last that in the innermost subclause? Or did I interpret the sentence wrongly?

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