Longest English sentence


There have been several claims for the longest sentence in the English language, usually with claims that revolve around the longest printed sentence, because there is no limit on the possible length of a written English sentence.
At least one linguistics textbook concludes that, in theory, "there is no longest English sentence." A sentence can be made arbitrarily long by successive iterations, such as
"Someone thinks that someone thinks that someone thinks that...," or by combining shorter clauses in various ways.
For example, sentences can be extended by recursively embedding clauses one into another, such as
The ability to embed structures within larger ones is called recursion. This also highlights the difference between linguistic performance and linguistic competence, because the language can support more variation than can reasonably be created or recorded.

Exceptionally long sentences in print