Talk:Longest English sentence

Comment

• Perhaps it would be nice to show what the Guinness Book of World Records claims to be the longest sentence in English. AltMaztermlk

• • I saw a claim that it was over 20 pages long. Coincedentally I found this snippet from www: "was the only person to know that the longest sentence in English literature was spoken by Molly Bloom, a character in Ulysses by James Joyce. This sentence is so long that in the original publication of the work, it extended for over forty pages, finally concluding with an affirmative "yes!" (Incidentally, this edition, which was published by Sylvia Beach of Shakespeare & Co. fame, is believed to contain over five thousand typographical errors.)" Another "longest sentence"? Better not add either :) AltMazter

• • • I don't have the Guinness Book myself, and this particular claim was not on their web page, so I couldn't add it. The claim of such a sentence from Ulysses seems likely wrong simply because Joyce was not constrained by usual rules of punctuation and grammar. Thus, while Ulyssses is English, it is debatable whether it contains many sentences at all.

Either way though, since the point I was making in the article was that there can, in principle, be no longest sentence I don't see the point of adding "pretenders to the crown". But, if anyone wants to add, I will have no objections. vanden 14:41, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

• • • • Well, I have read neither nor have a Guinness Book myself either, but if it were of a reasonable lenght it could've been added. If it is so-many pages long I don't think it would have any value at all, since this claimed sentence would be a senseless clutter of words. I do stand behind the point made in the article. AltMazter

Link does not work any more

Infinitely long sentences can be made

For example: Who polices the police? The police police. Who polices the police police? The police police police. Who polices the police police police? The police police police police.

This process can be repeated ad infinitum. Eventually you get an absurdly long sentence like "Who polices the police police police police police police police police police police police police police police police police police police police police police..."? This can also be done in other ways, such as:

"I had a friend who had a friend who had a friend who had a friend who had a friend who had a friend who had a friend..."

I would have blanked the page and replaced it with this stuff, but I wanted to get some input first.

Later edit: oops I didn't read the whole article, it says this. But I think this stuff should be first (the article is not "longest published english sentence")

Infinitely long sentences are a matter of opinion

Appealing to the "rules of English grammar" to justify the assertion that there is no longest sentence in English relies on an acceptance that the English language is something that is produced by the application of rules. While this may be a foundational assumption of some linguistic theories, it isn't shared by everyone. Notably, when teaching linguistics to undergraduates, the idea that sentences can be infinitely long is often resisted: they understand the "rules" they are being shown and why they produce infinitely long sentences, but they reject the idea that all "sentences" produced by the application of these rules are sentences of English.

Of course, there can be no proof that English sentences can or cannot be infinitely long, only differences in opinion as to (eg) whether recursive generative grammar type rules actually produce the sentences of English (and only the sentences of English). One could argue that "Who polices the {police * 10000000}" is a sentence on the basis of the chain of reasoning given above, or one could make some inconceivability claim to deny that it is a sentence of English. These arguments would reflect different opinions about what makes something a sentence of English. The article should reflect these differences in opinion Yekwah 11:38, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Given that mainstream linguistics fundamentally views grammatical rules as recursive, evidence to the contrary would require reputable published material to be cited as an opposing source. There are different views as to what constitutes a sentence of English: only one set of these views, however, could claim to be linguistically well-informed. Slac speak up! 11:44, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

This is probably an excellent place for an exception to Wikipedia's "No Original Research" policy, because it really doesn't take any research to discover that many people who would be recognized as English-speakers by all or nearly all linguists would nevertheless be skeptical of the idea that "Who polices the {police * 10000000}?" is a sentence that is written in their language. Yekwah's claim, as I understand it, is not that formal linguistic opinion differs on the point, but that popular opinion differs on the point; it's difficult for me to understand why popular opinion should be incompetent to express a view on a Wikipedia page as to what counts as a sentence. Invisible Flying Mangoes Nov 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.96.171.58 (talk) 03:45, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Dubious claim about regular grammars and natural language

Because English grammar is extensible in this manner, it is mathematically provable to not be a regular language with a finite grammar, a key concept in theoretical computer science.

This quote, removed from the main page, is either meaningless or incorrect. A regular language can produce a countably infinite set of expressions that are unbounded in length, just like natural language. As far as how long an expression can be that is produced by a class of languages, there is no difference between a regular language and a natural language. — λ (talk) 19:59, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I read about CompSci, but I don't have a degree. Feel free to look at the source and correct my wording, which seems to have been an infelicitous summary. --Dhartung | Talk 07:35, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

References

Jon Barth's Longest Sentence

The first short story in Barth's 'Lost in the Funhouse,' 'Frame-tale' is a recursive and neverending sentence. It comes with directions to cut out a part of the page that is printed on both sides: the one side says 'Once upon a time there' and the other side says 'was a story that began,' with instructions to fold the piece like a mobius strip. When read, then, it is a neverending sentence that reads 'Once upon a time there was a story that began "once upon a time there was a story that began 'once upon a time there was a story that began "once upon..."'"' Although printed it's nothing more than 10 printed words, the sentence itself is theoretically neverending, making it the longest English sentence, or at least tied for it. 70.20.241.177 (talk) 01:09, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

"The rat that the cat that the dog chased ran."

There is a quoted sentence in the main page "The rat that the cat that the dog chased ran."

But it seems to me that the clause "that the cat..." is not complete. Is it that the phrase should be "The rat that the cat that the dog chased chased ran." instead?

I mean, did the verification/grammar programme delete one "chase", assuming it's a repeated typo? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.189.145.92 (talk) 07:49, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Something is wrong with it. I think the comment about two chases in a row is correct. the_rat_that_the_cat_that_the_dog_chased_chased_ran. Or in other words:

The rat ran. The rat that the cat chased. The cat that the dog chased.

is the idea, but the sentence in the article is more like:

The rat that the cat ran. The cat that the dog chased.

The rat must have run the cat in a race or something, perhaps the rat is a gambler, and the cat is a cheetah. But what is the rat doing in this sentence? There is a missing verb. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.0.8.156 (talk) 08:53, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Molly Bloom

Although I don't feel qualified to actually correct the text, I would like to point out that the stated length of the Molly Bloom soliloquy sentence (12,931 words) is contradicted both by the wikipedia article Molly Bloom's soliloquy and the cited reference "Sacks' muscle memories", both of which give the length as 4,391 words.94.72.198.66 (talk) 12:18, 16 April 2013 (UTC)Andrewtblake

I have changed it. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 13:39, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Terrible example

I have never liked one of the examples given in the introductory sentence about how sentences can be arbitrarily long - this one: "The mouse that the cat that the dog chased ...." - it is hard to understand what it's trying to say, and doesn't obviously show how sentences can be extended. There was a discussion about it back in 2011 (see above) but no resolution. I'd like to kill it, as I think it's unnecessary. Any response? - DavidWBrooks (talk) 16:36, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Both examples are referenced. They look different to me. That you do not understand some wikipedia text is not a reson to its removal. If something is unclear, check the sources cited for better explanation and expand our article rather than trimming it. Staszek Lem (talk) 21:05, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

In fact a quick fact checking readily demonstrates the the example was terrible because Wikipedians were terrible. In fact, this is a quite notable example, with perfect sense, when stated correctly and from proper sources. Fixed. Thank you for bringing an attention to it. Staszek Lem (talk) 21:23, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

That's why I asked before doing anything. But "run away" isn't grammatical - shouldn't it be "ran away"? - DavidWBrooks (talk) 21:34, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Yep, there is no perfect Wikipedian, not even me :-). Staszek Lem (talk) 21:39, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

But the example still doesn't work - at the moment it concludes with this incomprehensible sentence that no English-speaking person would ever construct, or even understand: The mouse that the cat that the dog that the man frightened chased bit ran away. That might be an example of recursive string formation but it's not an example of a long English sentence. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 21:40, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

In fact, in the source ("Connectionist Psycholinguistics") it is given as an example of a sentence that is "extremely difficult to process" - showing how pure recursion doesn't work in natural language formation! - DavidWBrooks (talk) 21:43, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) In a way you nailed it: the sentence is incomprehensible indeed, but it was concocted in a scientific article which deals in part with limits of comprehension. And our article babbles a bit something to this end. Staszek Lem (talk) 21:46, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

pure recursion doesn't work in natural language formation - Yes it works. Please do not confuse formation and comprehension. Shucks, my very natural neighbor after a couple beers can speak even fancier than that. :-) Staszek Lem (talk) 21:48, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

(unindent)But this article is about constructing a long sentence, not about finding the limits of comprehension. It seems ineffective, at best, to say that there are ways to construct arbitrarily long English sentences, then to give an example that doesn't do that - it constructs an arbitrarily long non-sentence. The second example is a crappy sentence but it's a real, comprehensible sentence, and thus fits the purpose of this article. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 03:09, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Well, the sources say it is a sentence, and grammatically correct, too. And as I found and said, this is a famous example dating back to 1980s, but I don't have actual old sources at hand to cite. Staszek Lem (talk) 03:25, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

article is about constructing a long sentence, not about finding the limits of comprehension - Um, sorry, no. ""This work suggests a novel explanation of people’s limited recursive performance"". Staszek Lem (talk) 03:29, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Well, we're going to have to agree to disagree (a polite way to say "I'm right & you're wrong, but I can live with it"). At least let's put the coherent example first and the incoherent example second. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 14:19, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Fine with me. I understand your point of view. But language in linguistics and in "everyday life" are quite different things. Please take a look at Colorless green ideas sleep furiously or Glokaya kuzdra. You can say a sentence is grammatically incorrect, or incomprehensible, or meaningless, or whatever. But you cannot say it is a non-sentence. Just like in programming, a computer program may produce wrong results, in may even not compile, but it is still a program. Our disagreement stems it part from the same "Problem of Lazy Wikipedians" I complained: the article itself is framed as a piece of trivia. When in fact long, convoluted sentences are subject of serious research in linguistics and psychology. If the article were constructed from this perspective, the "terrible example" would not look that outworldly. Staszek Lem (talk) 19:01, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

That's an interesting way to think about it ... how could we reshape the article? I'm not sure we could under the title longest which implies a Guinness Book of Records viewpoint. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 19:17, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure -- of course not. The article is to be {{globalize}}d and moved. When I wrote the previous comment, I already had some ideas. Staszek Lem (talk) 19:52, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

P.S. Now that you have a strong opinion about "non"-sentences, let me remind you the Longest words page. I've been nibbling it here and there now and then, and we even had a brief altercation there. But now, after 3 months of {{cn}}, I will not object to a more aggressive butchering of it. Staszek Lem (talk) 19:59, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Wait - what about Longest punctuation mark? - DavidWBrooks (talk) 23:05, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

• Hah! that would be —, no? Staszek Lem (talk) 00:23, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Late to the party, but let me add my 2c to that "The mouse that the cat that the dog chased ..." example. It's formally correct, insofar as it exemplifies recursion in grammar, but it's still not a very good example, because it's a very special and uncommon form of recursion: center embedding. Center embedding is notorious in linguistic studies exactly for the reason that led to the confusion here. It's a form of recursion and, as such, theoretically repeatable indefinitely, but it's known to place an extra processing burden on the brain that limits its practical application to not much beyond one or two levels deep. I bet that whatever linguistic source was discussing that sentence was quoting it to illustrate that point, not just recursion as such. A more intuitive example of how recursion can generate sentences of arbitrary length would be one that uses right-edge embedding, as in This is the man that owns the dog that bothered the cat that chased the mouse that ate the cheese.... Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:35, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

Ducks, Newburyport

isn't a single sentence as such; it's a number of very, very long one-sentence sections broken up by more traditionally punctuated interludes and acting as discreet sections. Several of these sections could well feature on this article, but the novel itself isn't a single sentences. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C5:C92D:C101:ADBB:EBE0:5358:C23F (talk) 22:12, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Longest sentence in wikipedia

How about keeping a list here of the longest sentences in wikipedia, which would then become a project, to edit the worst of them and knock them off the list. Ccrrccrr (talk) 12:58, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

That's not a project for an article talk page, I don't think - hardly anybody will see it, for one thing. There are procedures for getting editors to participate in something like this, although I'm not sure what they are. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 15:40, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. You are absolutely correct. Ccrrccrr (talk) 12:15, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Returning to that recursive non-sentence

Are we certain that we have correctly quoted the recursive non-sentence:

"The mouse that the cat that the dog that the man frightened and chased ran away"

I've stumbled over it for years. Judging from the lead-in sentences it should say "The mouse that the cat hit that the dog <did something, I dunno what> that the man frightened and chased, ran away" As it currently stands it makes no sense and tells the reader nothing. Yes, I've argued this before (see above) but I'm still right, darn it! Looking above, you'll see somebody else complained about it a full decade ago. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 22:35, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Almost two years later, I've edited it. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 20:27, 15 February 2023 (UTC)