Quote:

Is this pure word porridge, or a nearly incomprehensibly hypotactic but nevertheless grammatical sentence?

You might want to read Carroll's Symbolic Logic. He enjoyed these sort of nonsensical syllogisms. The quotation from Alice, also seems to be poking fun at the British English penchant for double negatives being a sort of augmented positive, (e.g., "this is something I am not unfamiliar with").



One of the fun things about reading Douglas Adams' work is coming across his many homages to Carroll's writing. This passage for example, has an echo in one of my favourite bits of Life, The Universe and Everything

Quote:

That young girl," he added unexpectedly, "is one of the least
benightedly unintelligent life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting."


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