James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher

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"James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher" is an English sentence used to demonstrate lexical ambiguity and the necessity of punctuation,[1] which serves as a substitute for the intonation,[2] pitch, stress, and pauses found in human speech.[3] In human information processing research, the sentence has been used in to show how readers depend on punctuation to give sentences meaning, especially in the context of scanning across lines of text.[4] The sentence can be given as a grammatical puzzle[5][6][7] or an item on a test,[1][2] for which one must find the proper punctuation to give it meaning. Reichenbach used it in 1947 as an exercise to the reader (but as "John where Jack…"), to illustrate the different levels of language, namely object language and metalanguage.[8] In research showing how people make sense of information in their environment, this sentence was used to demonstrate how arbitrary decisions can drastically change meaning, analogous to how changes in the punctuation and quotes in the sentence show that the teacher alternately prefers James' work and John's work. ('James, while John had had "had", had...', or 'James, while John had had "had had",...')[9] The sentence is also used to show the semantic vagueness of the word "had", as well as demonstrate the difference between using of a word and mentioning a word.[10] It has also been used as an example of how complex language can get while still being syntactically correct.[11] The nouns "James" and "John", and the phrase "a better effect on the teacher" are often replaced with other nouns or phrases. The term "while" is often replaced with "where" or "whereas".[1][8]

The phrase can be understood more clearly by adding punctuation and quotation marks:

James, while John had had "had," had had "had had";

"had had" had had a better effect on the teacher.[12]

The meaning could thus be rendered, after some reordering and changing a few words, "While John had used 'had,' James had used 'had had.' The teacher had preferred 'had had.'"

Use in literature

A similar, punctuated repetition of had had appears in Jasper Fforde's The Well of Lost Plots: Template:BlockquotetopGood. Item seven. The had had and that that problem. [...] 'Okay,' said the Bellman, whose head was in danger of falling apart like a chocolate orange, 'let me get this straight: David Copperfield, unlike Pilgrim's Progress, which had had had, had had had had. Had had had had TGC's approval?'

There was a very long pause.

'Right,' said the Bellman with a sigh. Template:Blockquotebottom

Discussion in Fowler's

Chance repetition of words is a natural feature of the language. Sometimes it happens because the repeated words are just part of the ordinary way in which verbs work... At other times it occurs because the same word is used twice with different functions.

— Fowler's, 1996 edition

Fowler's examines the following cases:

  • Had had — "Of course he too had had a choice and still had one." — I. Murdoch, 1989.
  • Do do — "The way in which we do do such things" — BBC Radio 4, 1990.
  • Her her — "She brings with her her daughter" — M. Drabble, 1985
  • That that — "Not that that would bother most people nowadays" — P. Lively, 1989.
  • Was was — "Such publicity as there was was left to the Chairman and senior editors" — P. Howard, 1990.
  • In in — "He'll be in in a minute" — N. Virtue, 1990.
  • It it — "While we're at it it wasn't me with the fedora" — M. Richler, 1980.
  • Out out — "We are getting people who had a right to be out out" — BBC 1 News, 1990.
  • That that that that — "That that I say is this: that that that that gentleman has advanced, is not that, that he should have said to your Lordships." — attributed to "a pseudonymous writer" of the eighteenth century.
  • Is is — "The question is, is..."' — David Owen, 1987

Fowler's goes on to refer to Jespersen's Modern English Grammar for further discussion, and then mentions the work of an American scholar, Dwight Bolinger, on a phenomenon Fowler's calls "pleonastic doubling".

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Magonet, Jonathan (2004). A rabbi reads the Bible (2nd ed.). SCM-Canterbury Press. p. 19. ISBN 9780334029526. Retrieved 2009-04-30. You may remember an old classroom test in English language. What punctuation marks do you have to add to this sentence so as to make sense of it?
  2. ^ a b Dundes, Alan (1987). When you're up to your ass in alligators: more urban folklore from the paperwork empire (Illustrated ed.). Wayne State University Press. p. 135. ISBN 0814318673. Retrieved 2009-04-30. The object of this and similar tests is to make sense of a series of words by figuring out the correct intonation pattern. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  3. ^ Hudson, Grover (1999). Essential introductory linguistics. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 372. ISBN 0631203044. Retrieved 2009-04-30. Writing is secondary to speech, in history and in the fact that speech and not writing is fundamental to the human species.
  4. ^ van de Velde, Roger G. (1992). Text and thinking: on some roles of thinking in text interpretation (Illustrated ed.). Walter de Gruyter. p. 43. ISBN 3110132508. Retrieved 2009-04-30. In scanning across lines, readers also make use of the information parts carried along with the punctuatuion markes: a period, a dash, a colon, a semicolon or a comma may signal different degrees of integration/separation between the groupings.
  5. ^ Amon, Mike (2004-01-28). "GADFLY". Financial Times. Retrieved 2009-04-30. HAD up to here? So were readers of last week's column, invited to punctuate "Smith where Jones had had had had had had had had had had had the examiners approval."
  6. ^ Jackson, Howard (2002). Grammar and Vocabulary: A Resource Book for Students. Routledge. p. 123. ISBN 0415231701. Retrieved 2009-04-30. Finally, verbal humour is often an ingredient of puzzles. As part of an advertising campaign for its educationa website <learn.co.uk>, the Guardian (for 3 january 2001) included the following familiar grammatical puzzle.
  7. ^ 3802 - Operator Jumble
  8. ^ a b Reichenbach, Hans (1947) Elements of symbolic logic. London: Collier-MacMillan. Exercise 3-4, p.405; solution p.417.
  9. ^ Weick, Karl E. (2005). Making Sense of the Organization (8th ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. p. 186-187. ISBN 0631223193. Retrieved 2009-04-30. Once a person has generated/bracketed part of the stream, then the activities of punctuation an dconnection (parsing) can occur in an effort to transform the raw data into information.
  10. ^ Lecercle, Jean-Jacques (1990). The violence of language (Illustrated ed.). Routledge. p. 86. ISBN 0415034310. Retrieved 2009-04-30. Suppose I decide that I wish to make up a sentence containing eleven occurrences of the word 'had' in a row ...
  11. ^ Hollin, Clive R. (1995). Contemporary Psychology: An Introduction (Illustrated ed.). Routledge. p. 34. ISBN 0748401911. Retrieved 2009-04-30. Do readers make use of the ways in which sentences are structured?
  12. ^ "Problem C: Operator Jumble". 31st ACM International Collegiate Programming Conference, 2006–2007.
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