Trent Reznor Prize nomination
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Today we have a worthy nominee for the Trent Reznor Prize for Tricky Embedding — Lucy Mangan, "Digested week: Ducks in the garden and Wordle are my rocks in a sea of chaos and injustice", The Guardian 4/9/2022:
Growing up in Catford, southeast London, a short walk from the gun shop under Eros House (under whose umbrous overhang took place so much teenage fumbling that – as long as the Greek god’s scope includes Mere Genital Curiosity as well as the higher forms of human longing – could not have been more suitably named), I devoured books about the countryside and all its myriad natural delights.
Stephen Powell, who sent in the link, noted that "I think there’s a missing 'it' at the first level of nesting, but it’s complicated enough that I’m not sure."
My own suggestion for the missing "it", which may or may not be the same as his, would be "could not have been more suitably named" -> "it could not have been more suitably named". I agree that it's hard to be sure whether the sentence is grammatical without this interpolation. But I think the issue is a bit deeper than the "the first level of nesting": if I've counted right, the constituent structure has seven open brackets at the point where "it" might-or-might-not belong.
The prize's history goes back to a submission by Matthew Hutson, documented in "The Trent Reznor Prize for Tricky Embedding", 11/3/2006.
David Marjanović said,
April 13, 2022 @ 6:22 am
I find this so obvious that at first I didn't even notice the it wasn't there. Without it, the fumbling couldn't have been more suitably named, not the house.
Gregory Kusnick said,
April 13, 2022 @ 8:44 am
I'm wondering if at one point in its evolution the sentence said something like "…Eros House (that could not have been more suitably named, given the amount of teenage fumbling etc.)…" and then got permuted into its current form.
Philip Taylor said,
April 13, 2022 @ 8:56 am
I know that Knuth's "wicked which" still causes some concern in some quarters, but for me your re-cast would require a 'which' where you have a 'that', Gregory — Eros House (which could not have been more suitably named, given the amount of teenage fumbling etc.)…"
John Swindle said,
April 13, 2022 @ 11:02 pm
Using "that" to introduce a non-restrictive clause doesn't feel wrong to me, it feels archaic. Merriam-Webster seems to agree, saying that the words "that" and "which" were "frequently interchangeable until the 18th century."
Andrew Deacon said,
April 14, 2022 @ 3:49 am
This appears to be grammatical British English, the clause -as long as… Is interpolated into the sentence between that and could not and therefore it would be at best redundant and at worst incorrect
Andrew Deacon said,
April 14, 2022 @ 3:54 am
An addition, if commas had been used by the author rather than dashes would there have been an apparent problem?
Chester Draws said,
April 14, 2022 @ 6:26 pm
I know that Knuth's "wicked which" still causes some concern in some quarters,
If a grammatical rule is so awkward and difficult to get right, it will always be broken. Pretty much no longer making it a rule.
JPL said,
April 14, 2022 @ 8:18 pm
I think it is in fact the "teenage fumbling" that is the antecedent of the following "that" (i.e., that the referent of the phrase "teenage fumbling" is also the referent of the "that"), which is in turn functioning as "subject" of the relative clause "could … suitably named", so that, "… so much teenage fumbling that … could not have been more suitably named [(or labelled) than as "Eros]". The parenthetical relative clause modifying "Eros House" is concerned with the nature of amorous experiences, but the main clause is concerned with reading experiences. (I thought someone had already suggested this interpretation, but I'm not seeing it.)
John Swindle said,
April 14, 2022 @ 11:58 pm
JPL, your interpretation makes the sentence grammatical, but I doubt that that's what the sentence was supposed to mean.
It was David Marjanović who suggested that without the missing "it," the sentence seemed to say teenage fumbling, rather than Eros House, couldn't have been more suitably named. The implication was the intended referent was the remarkable name "Eros House" and not the unremarkable name (if it's a name) "teenage fumbling." I agree.
Andrew Usher said,
April 16, 2022 @ 10:57 am
The 'it' is required. Not only the parenthetical clause but the opening prepositional clause can be removed without affecting grammaticality, and then we get just "(could not have been more suitably named)", obviously missing a subject. The rewrite using 'which' would also fix the problem, but Mark Liberman noticed it correctly. It was likely just a mistake.
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