Skinning a bear with Rosanne Barr

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…vs. having a video conversation with her…

Attachment ambiguity of the week: "RFK Jr. says he dumped dead bear in Central Park after ditching plan to skin it in bizarre video with Roseanne Barr", NY Post 8/4/2024.

The Berkeley Neural Parser thinks that he planned to skin the bear in a video with Rosanne Barr:

(Presumably with her as co-skinner with him, not co-skinnee with the bear…)

But of course the headline writer meant for the PP "with Rosanne Barr" to modify "a bizarre video", and for the resulting PP "in a bizarre video with Rosanne Barr" to modify "RFK Jr. says [he dumped dead bear in Central Park after ditching plan to skin it]".

SpaCy comes to the same conclusion.

[h/t J.W. Brewer]



6 Comments

  1. Y said,

    August 5, 2024 @ 12:27 pm

    That's very silly. Obviously he was going to skin Central Park.

  2. Cervantes said,

    August 5, 2024 @ 2:43 pm

    Just saw this today.

    Crocodile believed responsible for killing man on vacation with family.

  3. AntC said,

    August 6, 2024 @ 12:37 am

    The actual story seems no less bizarre than the meaning from myl's mis-parsing.

    Kennedy is averaging 5.5% in presidential polls

    And we know most of the Kennedy clan aren't supporting him.

    Scion [wiktionary]
    2. The heir to a throne.
    3. A guardian.

    Then is the article using 'scion' appropriately?

  4. Olaf Zimmermann said,

    August 6, 2024 @ 3:15 am

    A strange illustration of Verbal Behavior indeed.

  5. Nat said,

    August 6, 2024 @ 12:52 pm

    @ antc
    It is. Wiktionary is letting you down a bit there, and leaving out some older definitions I find helpful. Here's Merriam-Webster:

    1
    a
    : descendant, child
    especially : a descendant of a wealthy, aristocratic, or influential family
    b
    : heir sense 1
    scion of a railroad empire
    2
    : a detached living portion of a plant (such as a bud or shoot) joined to a stock in grafting and usually supplying solely aerial parts to a graft

  6. /df said,

    August 7, 2024 @ 6:15 am

    Even knowing the story already, I still parsed the headline like the Berkeley Neural Parser. It must be doing something right.

    Also, celebrity game butchery: best TV series idea this week!

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