Tarp audit questions
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Crash blossom of the day:
Rick Rubenstein (aka Rubrick) writes:
My first reading interpreted "TARP Audit Questions" as a triple-noun phrase, and down the garden path I went, with the questions rushing to close the dealers. My second reading was the correct one. My third reading, in which the TARP Audit forced dealers to close by the expedient of interrogating a Canadian prog rock trio, was the most picturesque.
William Ockham said,
July 19, 2010 @ 3:20 pm
Wouldn't the Brits possibly interpret this as TARP (noun) Audit (verb) Questions Rush (double noun phrase) to close Auto Dealers? That is, the TARP was auditing something called "Questions Rush" so that TARP could close down the auto dealers. I have no idea what a "Questions Rush" could be, but I often can't figure out those types of phrases in Brit headlines.
richard howland-bolton said,
July 19, 2010 @ 3:33 pm
@William
Course we wouldn't.
Remember Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate
Freddy Hill said,
July 19, 2010 @ 3:39 pm
Additional paths open up if you read "close" as "near."
John said,
July 19, 2010 @ 3:41 pm
@William: I find plural noun + noun to be awkward, and have wondered about how frequently it actually occurs, both in general, and in dialect variation. In AmE, I would expect "question rush" as a noun phrase; is "questions rush" plausible in BrE?
[(myl) Some have said that plural nouns are ungrammatical as the first element of a noun compound; but see here.]
Steve Harris said,
July 19, 2010 @ 3:47 pm
I like reading it as
{TARP Audit} (NP) {Questions Rush} (VO) {to Close Auto Dealers} (inf-VO)
Though why you'd question a talk-radio personality in order to close dealerships is rather mysterious.
Mr Punch said,
July 19, 2010 @ 3:55 pm
If the Times refused all-caps for four-letter acronyms instead of starting at five ("Nafta") it'd be worse.
Margaret said,
July 19, 2010 @ 4:57 pm
Another possible garden path headline from the NYT today?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/business/global/19debt.html?ref=world "After Tumult, Debt Worries Ease in Europe"
Darla-Jean Weatherford said,
July 19, 2010 @ 5:56 pm
Then if you throw Limbaugh into the confusion, it doesn't get better….
Dan T. said,
July 19, 2010 @ 5:58 pm
I frequently see headlines of the sort "Girl abducted from [someplace] [sometime] found", where I first read it as reporting a girl being abducted, but ultimately find out that it's actually reporting a new development in an old abduction case.
Scott said,
July 19, 2010 @ 6:55 pm
I very much approve of this; I've always been in favour of getting Rush involved in matters of state.
@John "Questions rush" sounds a little clunky but quite possible. I can imagine an inquiry into the Cash for Questions scandal of the 1990s being reported with the headline "Questions probe yields answers" or something of the like. In most circumstances, though, the singular form would sound better.
Ginger Yellow said,
July 20, 2010 @ 4:13 am
Wouldn't the Brits possibly interpret this as TARP (noun) Audit (verb) Questions Rush (double noun phrase) to close Auto Dealers?
Definitely not if they knew what TARP was (a law or programme doesn't get the plural treatment), and almost certainly not anyway, given the extremely implausible semantics of that interpretation.
Ken Brown said,
July 20, 2010 @ 4:43 am
So is the correct reading that there is a thing called a TARP, and the people who are auditing this TARP think that some businesses that sell cars should remain in business, but someone else somewhere else is rushing to close them down?
There is certainly a possible alternative reading that has these auditors asking someone called Rush questions, with the intention of shutting down the car shops.
I don't know what TARP is, and in that state of ignorance, I think I naturally read "TARP auditors" as "people auditing TARP" rather than "auditors from TARP".
Alan Palmer said,
July 20, 2010 @ 4:52 am
Comprehensibility isn't helped by their use of headline case. Still, I suppose it could be worse – they might have used ALL CAPS.
innokenti said,
July 20, 2010 @ 5:16 am
Whenever I read tarp, my first reaction is to assume it's a misspelling of 'trap'. I then remember that this is merely derived from a common amusement among friends and nobody else goes around shouting "Oh no! It's a tarp!" in not entirely semi-ironic fashion.
Garden-path headlines appear to be de rigueur for most British tabloids – to which I am unfortunately frequently subjected to through Google News. Just now, the Mirror's "British holiday plunge girl critical in hospital" baffled me. Without actually reading the article there seems to be almost no point to trying to decipher the headline which makes me think this is an intentional ploy to get you to click-through and read!
Ginger Yellow said,
July 20, 2010 @ 6:07 am
So is the correct reading that there is a thing called a TARP, and the people who are auditing this TARP think that some businesses that sell cars should remain in business, but someone else somewhere else is rushing to close them down?
Not quite. There's a thing called the Troubled Assets Relief Program(me), which to simplify a bit is the $700bn bailout fund created when Lehman blew up. One of the things TARP money was used for was the restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler, as part of which hundreds of dealerships were closed down. The Special Inspector General of TARP, whose job it is to audit the programme, has written a report in which he criticises the decision to shut down so many dealerships so quickly
Ginger Yellow said,
July 20, 2010 @ 6:11 am
Just now, the Mirror's "British holiday plunge girl critical in hospital" baffled me. Without actually reading the article there seems to be almost no point to trying to decipher the headline which makes me think this is an intentional ploy to get you to click-through and read!
Is this genuinely baffling? I'm so used to British headlinese that it's totally transparent to me – a British girl who plunged (presumably from a window or off a roof or something) while on holiday is in a critical condition in hospital. I can certainly understand some tabloid compound nouns being baffling to the inexperienced, but that one seems to lead fairly straightforwardly to its intended meaning.
Ellen Marks said,
July 20, 2010 @ 8:38 am
This rather shameless headline from the Springfield Republican in Massachusetts is not a crash blossom, but interesting nonetheless for the way it went viral so quickly last week:
"One-armed man arrested for unarmed robbery"
David Moye at AOL news dishes the dirt:
http://www.aolnews.com/weird-news/article/one-armed-criminals-bad-crime-inspires-great-headline/19558190
Nancy Wright said,
July 22, 2010 @ 7:53 am
A small crash blossom from the online edition of the Atlanta paper the other day:
"Number of police killed skyrockets"
I felt bad for all the poor dead skyrockets…
MS said,
July 24, 2010 @ 1:21 am
"Texas dropout rate rock hard disaster"
Source: Jim Adler blog via the Houston Chronicle. Dated 7/23/10.
Carl said,
July 30, 2010 @ 11:10 am
Does this one qualify as a crash blossom?
"Ghost fishing lobster traps target of study"
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/prince-edward-island/story/2010/07/30/pei-lobster-trap-ghost-fishing-584.html