There have been several claims for the longest sentence in the English language.
There is no absolute limit on the length of an English sentence. A sentence describing successive numbers, for example, could stretch to infinity, and one concatenating clauses with grammatical conjunctions such as and could go on as long as material may be supplied. Thus, at least one linguistics textbook concludes that "there is no longest English sentence".[1] Another way to extend sentences indefinitely is by the addition of modifiers and modifier clauses, such as
The rat that the cat that the dog chased ran.
or of successive extensions of the form
Someone thinks/knows/believes that someone thinks/knows/believes that....
This highlights the difference between linguistic performance and linguistic competence, because the language can support more variation than can reasonably be created or recorded.
As for published work, it is an open matter as to what should be considered an admissible sentence. Joyce's entries listed below could have been much shortened by the addition of a few full stops(periods), with arguably little effect.
