There have been several claims for the longest sentence in the English language. Claims revolve around the longest printed sentence, as there is no absolute limit on the length of a written English sentence; a sentence describing successive reading, for example, could be infinitely long, and one concatenating clauses with grammatical conjunctions such as and could go on as long as material may be supplied. Also, a way to extend sentences indefinitely is by the addition of modifiers and modifier clauses, such as
- The mouse that the cat that the dog chased saw ran.[1]
or of successive extensions of the form
- Someone thinks/knows/believes that someone thinks/knows/believes that...,[2]
which highlights the difference between linguistic performance and linguistic competence, because the language can support more variation than can reasonably be created or recorded.[2] Therefore, at least one linguistics textbook concludes that "there is no longest English sentence"[3]
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Contenders
- 469,375 words - Nigel Tomm's one-sentence novel, "The Blah Story" [4][5]
- 1,288 words - The Guinness Book of World Records has an entry for what it claims is the longest sentence in English, from William Faulkner's novel Absalom, Absalom!.
- 12,931 - The last section of James Joyce's Ulysses, Molly Bloom's soliloquy, consists of two sentences. The first one is 11,282 words long, and the second is 12,931 words long. This held the record for the longest sentence until The Rotter's Club was published in 2001.[6]
- 13,955 - Jonathan Coe's 2001 novel The Rotters' Club contains a 13,955-word sentence.[6][7]
- 7,000 words- In a court order sentence to implicate 17 people in 2G scam by India's CBI Judge O.B. Saini in 2011.[8]
See also
Notes
- ^ Elaine Rich (2007). Automata, Computability and Complexity: Theory and Applications. Pearson Prentice Hall. ISBN 0132288060. http://books.google.com/?id=lIuu53IcKWoC.
- ^ a b Stephen Crain, Diane Lillo-Martin (1999). An Introduction to Linguistic Theory and Language Acquisition. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 063119536X. http://books.google.com/?id=NgBBKuYrV2wC.
- ^ Steven E. Weisler, Slavoljub P. Milekic, Slavko Milekic (2000). Theory of Language. MIT Press. ISBN 0262731258. http://books.google.com/?id=wIaGLUFHtxsC.
- ^ "Sacks' muscle memories", The Guardian, 1 December 2007
- ^ Sanderson, Mark (2005-05-29). "Literary life". Daily Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/05/22/boll.xml. Retrieved 2010-05-11.
- ^ a b "Sacks' muscle memories", The Guardian, 1 December 2007
- ^ Sanderson, Mark (2005-05-29). "Literary life". Daily Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/05/22/boll.xml. Retrieved 2010-05-11.
- ^ Times of India article
External links and references
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