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People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does.

Quite unusually, in this sentence "what" occurs twice and third person verb form "does" appears after the verb "do." Can you please help to understand what kind of sentence is it?

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The OP's sentence:

People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does.

It is always a lot easier to understand a long sentence if you break it into segments:

  • People know what they do; frequently they know why they do [what they do]; but what they don't know is what [what they do] does.

The "what they do" acts as the object. You can understand it as one word "what-they-do" - something that they do. The last part means that "The people don't know what (what they do) does".

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