Date:  Fri, 22 Sep 1995 11:31:13 -0500

From:  Katherine Catmull <kate[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]BGA.COM>

Subject: Re: acceptability/grammaticality judgments, please -Reply



On Fri, 22 Sep 1995, Molly Dickmeyer wrote:



> 2. Who does she think said ate the cake?

>

> This one is harder for me to understand. Perhaps:

> Who does she think said "ate the cake"?

>

> Or is there an understood "you" here?



Perhaps it's just my natural cavalier approach to spoken grammar, but

this sentence made immediate sense to me. I read it as "Who does she think

said [he or she] ate the cake?", with the "who" doing double-duty

referring to the person who ate the cake and the person who said they ate

the cake--which would of course be the same person.



However, the more I re-read it, the more uncertain I get. It doesn't do

to think too hard about on-the-fly grammatical constructions.



Kate Catmull          kate[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]bga.com