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Okay, this may sound like a weird question, however, every time I think about it, I cannot explain it to myself.

How many times can you repeat a sentence such as "I thought that you thought that I thought that you thought..." before it stops making sense? Well... not really stop making sense, but... when you repeat it enough times, how would you interpret it?

Of course, I realize that nobody would ever use that kind of repetition in a sentence, so I'm just speaking hypothetically.

2006-11-29 15:26:09 · 4 answers · asked by johnny d 2 in Education & Reference Words & Wordplay

Wow. apparently, some of you THOUGHT that you had a sense of humor. don't quit your day jobs.

Let me rephrase it in this way:
Why is it that I am able to coherently say:

"I thought that you thought that I thought that you thought.."

however if I were to repeat it a few more times, the sentence simply isnt coherent. My question is why is true, and is there a name for it?

I loked up "recurrent structure", but did not find anything on it.

2006-11-29 15:55:23 · update #1

4 answers

" I thought that you thought that I thought that you thought." I think that is about it because after that you would be only referring to the same thought that you thought you have thought before. Unless another person is added or another thought different than the first 2 thoughts, then it could be endless, hypothetically.

2006-11-29 15:31:58 · answer #1 · answered by hazyseptember 3 · 1 1

in linguistics it is called "recurrent structure". basically the brain scans from the last clause mentioned and traces back to the beginning of the sentence.
hypothetically, it would be endless. Yet, how someone interprets it depends on how his/ her brain could manage to trace back the beginning of the sentence -that is, how smart he/ she is.

2006-11-29 15:43:14 · answer #2 · answered by Man Of Earth 2 · 1 0

... and to think that you thought that I might think that you would care what I thought about you thinking about how long to think about this thought.

2006-11-29 15:29:10 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

for a very long time.

2006-11-29 15:27:04 · answer #4 · answered by sthomas27 3 · 0 0

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