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Longest English sentence

The Guinness Book of World Records has an entry for what they claim is the longest sentence in English. They cite a sentence from one of William Faulkner's novels.

Notably, long sentences abound. Section I of Allen Ginsburg's poem Howl is one long sentence.

But there can be no "longest sentence of English." There may well be a unique longest published sentence of English and a unique longest English sentence ever used, but there is no upper bound on the length of English sentences.

English grammar contains recursive rules. (It is an open question whether the grammar of a natural language like English can be fully described solely by recursive rules.) A recursive rule is one which applies to objects of a given sort and produces further objects of that same sort. Thus, the results of applying a recursive rule can have that same recursive rule applied to them. This process can be repeated as often as desired.

Among the recursive rules of English are the following:

  • If P and Q are sentences, so is "P and Q"
If P is a sentence and N is a name, "N said ' P ' " is a sentence.

So, if X is the sentence that the Guinness Book cites as the longest English sentence, here is one that is longer:

According to the Guinness Book ' X ' is the longest sentence of English.

Here is one that is still longer:

On this page appears the sentence "According to the Guinness Book ' X ' is the longest sentence of English."

And another:

On this page appears the sentence "According to the Guinness Book ' X ' is the longest sentence of English" and that sentence is not the longest sentence on this page.

Obviously, this process can be repeated until long after it has stopped being fun to do so.

See also: generative grammar, indefinite extendibility

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