ecn-pa:alexande (12/09/82)
I've always heard that one with one extra "had": John, where James had had "had", had had "had had"; "had had" had had a better effect on the teacher. Alan Alexander-Manifold Purdue Library Systems Dept.
gh (12/10/82)
A fortiori: John, where James had had "had", had had "had had"; had "had had" had had the teacher's approval, no one would have been surprised. (Learned when I was in elementary school.)
cjp (12/11/82)
From: unc!duke!decvax!yale-com!brunix!gh Fri Dec 10 09:53:21 1982 (brunix.1088) net.nlang : Re: hads A fortiori: John, where James had had "had", had had "had had"; had "had had" had had the teacher's approval, no one would have been surprised. (Learned when I was in elementary school.) Sorry, gh, but your last "had" loses. You can say "had 'x' had something, then 'y'"; this would be a "conditional" reference to a simple past condition. Or, you can say "'x' had had something"; this is a past perfect construction. But if you want a condition based on whether something had had something else already sometime in the past, I think you have to go to "if 'x' had had something, then 'y'." Having gotten this off my chest, I can now say Charles, where brunix!gh had had "had had 'had', had had 'had had'; had 'had had' had had", had had "had had 'had', had had 'had had'; had 'had had' had"; had "had had 'had', had had 'had had'; had 'had had' had had", had the teacher's approval, Charles would have complained about the teacher's uncouth replication of "had"s. (Incidentally, I can say this regardless of whether my opening analysis of the correctness of gh's version meets with various teachers' approvals or not. Of course gh could rewrite the same sentence with an additional "had" before "had the teacher's approval", but, as with his earlier sentence, it would not meet with my approval. No flames please, I'm just waxing ironic.) Since, given enough levels of quotation marks, this sort of indirection can trivially be made to go on forever, and since no one wants to read about how someone discovered a "had"s sentence containing a Mercenne prime number of consecutive "had"s, replete with the full punctuated text thereof, I suggest that further discussion of "had"s be canned. Had enough for ya? :^) duke!mcnc!cjp Charles J. Poirier